Unsung Heroes - Black History
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Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
J A M E S * A R M I S T E A D
P a t r i o t * S p y
Wars are rarely fought without the use of spies and the American Revolution was no exception. Arguably, the most important Revolutionary War spy was a slave named James Armistead.
Born around 1748 in New Kent, Va., Armistead was given permission by his master to join the revolutionary cause. Although many fought as soldiers, blacks, both free and enslaved were being used by the British and the Americans to gain intelligence against each other. Armistead, however, was used by both sides, making him a double-agent.
In 1781, he joined the army and was put in service under the Marquis de Lafayette, who was desperately trying to fight the chaos caused in Virginia by turncoat soldier Benedict Arnold. His forces diminished by British Gen. Charles Cornwallis' troops, Lafayette needed reliable information about enemy movements.
Armistead began his work posing as an escaped slave, entering Arnold's camp as an orderly and guide, then sent what he learned back to Lafayette. He later returned north with Arnold and was posted close enough to Cornwallis' camp to learn further details of British operations without being detected. By also being used as a British spy (who fed them inaccurate data), Armistead was able to travel freely between both sides. One day, he discovered that the British naval fleet was moving 10,000 troops to Yorktown, Va., making it a central post for their operation.
Using the intricate details Armistead provided, Lafayette and a stunned, but relieved George Washington lay siege to the town. Concentrating both American and French forces, a huge blockade was formed, crippling the British military and resulting in their surrender on Oct. 19, 1781.
Rex Ellis, vice president of Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area, says Armistead's role was critical to the American victory. "If he had not given the information that he gave at the strategic time he did, they would not have had the intelligence to create the blockade that ended the war."
Despite his critical actions, Armistead had to petition the Virginia legislature for manumission. Lafayette assisted him by writing a recommendation for his freedom, which was granted in 1787. In gratitude Armistead adopted Lafayette's surname and lived as a farmer in Virignia until his death in 1830.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/01.html
J A M E S * A R M I S T E A D
P a t r i o t * S p y
Wars are rarely fought without the use of spies and the American Revolution was no exception. Arguably, the most important Revolutionary War spy was a slave named James Armistead.
Born around 1748 in New Kent, Va., Armistead was given permission by his master to join the revolutionary cause. Although many fought as soldiers, blacks, both free and enslaved were being used by the British and the Americans to gain intelligence against each other. Armistead, however, was used by both sides, making him a double-agent.
In 1781, he joined the army and was put in service under the Marquis de Lafayette, who was desperately trying to fight the chaos caused in Virginia by turncoat soldier Benedict Arnold. His forces diminished by British Gen. Charles Cornwallis' troops, Lafayette needed reliable information about enemy movements.
Armistead began his work posing as an escaped slave, entering Arnold's camp as an orderly and guide, then sent what he learned back to Lafayette. He later returned north with Arnold and was posted close enough to Cornwallis' camp to learn further details of British operations without being detected. By also being used as a British spy (who fed them inaccurate data), Armistead was able to travel freely between both sides. One day, he discovered that the British naval fleet was moving 10,000 troops to Yorktown, Va., making it a central post for their operation.
Using the intricate details Armistead provided, Lafayette and a stunned, but relieved George Washington lay siege to the town. Concentrating both American and French forces, a huge blockade was formed, crippling the British military and resulting in their surrender on Oct. 19, 1781.
Rex Ellis, vice president of Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area, says Armistead's role was critical to the American victory. "If he had not given the information that he gave at the strategic time he did, they would not have had the intelligence to create the blockade that ended the war."
Despite his critical actions, Armistead had to petition the Virginia legislature for manumission. Lafayette assisted him by writing a recommendation for his freedom, which was granted in 1787. In gratitude Armistead adopted Lafayette's surname and lived as a farmer in Virignia until his death in 1830.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/01.html
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
E U N I C E ∙ H U N T O N ∙ C A R T E R
M o b_B u s t e r
The 1920s and 30s were a time when organized crime was an unseen hand playing a significant part in urban life across the country. In no city was that more evident than New York. At the time, law enforcement hadn't made the connection between racketeering and petty crime. Then Eunice Hunton Carter came along.
Born in Atlanta in 1899, to activist parents, Carter became a social worker who practiced in New York and New Jersey for several years before earning a law degree from Fordham University Law School, the first black woman to do so. In 1935, she was appointed by New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to study situations in Harlem. But soon her street smarts and work as a Women's Court prosecutor with knowledge about prostitution cases, and a theory that the streetwalkers were connected to the mob, got her hired as an assistant district attorney under then-special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. Her investigative work showed that when prostitutes were arrested, they all seemed to have the same lawyers, bondsmen and alibis, leading her to theorize that prostitution was an organized racket.
As it turns out, the investigation revealed that mob figures were providing these services to the prostitutes in exchange for 50 percent of their take, which brought in millions for the underworld. Dewey ordered raids on 80 brothels, arresting 100 prostitutes. Carter's questioning of several resulted in evidence that led to New York's most powerful mob figure — Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who was not found to be directly connected to the brothels, but gave a non-interference nod to its operation. Essentially this meant he was, in fact, a crime boss.
"This was the beginning of the end for organized crime they way it operated," said Peter Kougasian, an assistant Manhattan district attorney. "It showed that they were not invulnerable and it also represented an end for major political corruption as well." The case tried by the famed "Twenty Against The Underworld," as Dewey called his team, and resulted in a 30 to 50-year sentence, for Luciano, although he was paroled and deported to Italy in 1946.
After her role in what had been the largest organized crime prosecution in U.S. history, Dewey (who was elected New York District Attorney in 1937, appointed Carter head of the D.A.'s Special Sessions Bureau. In 1945, she entered private practice and continued her activities in organizations including the National Council of Negro Women, the United Nations and on the national board of the YWCA, on which she remained until her death in 1970.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/02.html
E U N I C E ∙ H U N T O N ∙ C A R T E R
M o b_B u s t e r
The 1920s and 30s were a time when organized crime was an unseen hand playing a significant part in urban life across the country. In no city was that more evident than New York. At the time, law enforcement hadn't made the connection between racketeering and petty crime. Then Eunice Hunton Carter came along.
Born in Atlanta in 1899, to activist parents, Carter became a social worker who practiced in New York and New Jersey for several years before earning a law degree from Fordham University Law School, the first black woman to do so. In 1935, she was appointed by New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to study situations in Harlem. But soon her street smarts and work as a Women's Court prosecutor with knowledge about prostitution cases, and a theory that the streetwalkers were connected to the mob, got her hired as an assistant district attorney under then-special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. Her investigative work showed that when prostitutes were arrested, they all seemed to have the same lawyers, bondsmen and alibis, leading her to theorize that prostitution was an organized racket.
As it turns out, the investigation revealed that mob figures were providing these services to the prostitutes in exchange for 50 percent of their take, which brought in millions for the underworld. Dewey ordered raids on 80 brothels, arresting 100 prostitutes. Carter's questioning of several resulted in evidence that led to New York's most powerful mob figure — Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who was not found to be directly connected to the brothels, but gave a non-interference nod to its operation. Essentially this meant he was, in fact, a crime boss.
"This was the beginning of the end for organized crime they way it operated," said Peter Kougasian, an assistant Manhattan district attorney. "It showed that they were not invulnerable and it also represented an end for major political corruption as well." The case tried by the famed "Twenty Against The Underworld," as Dewey called his team, and resulted in a 30 to 50-year sentence, for Luciano, although he was paroled and deported to Italy in 1946.
After her role in what had been the largest organized crime prosecution in U.S. history, Dewey (who was elected New York District Attorney in 1937, appointed Carter head of the D.A.'s Special Sessions Bureau. In 1945, she entered private practice and continued her activities in organizations including the National Council of Negro Women, the United Nations and on the national board of the YWCA, on which she remained until her death in 1970.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/02.html
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
R E B E C C A ∙ L E E ∙ C R U M P L E R
A ∙ M e d i c a l ∙ M i l e s t o n e
Because medical practitioners focus more on their patients than any notoriety, historical figures in medicine are often rendered obscure. Such is the case of Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African American woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S.
Crumpler was born in 1831 and raised by an aunt who spent much of her time caring for infirm neighbors. The aunt likely influenced her choice to go into the medical profession, especially since medical care for the needs of poor blacks was almost non-existant during the antebellum years.
Between 1852 and 1860, Crumpler worked as a nurse in Charlestown, Mass. However, a wider door had been opened for women physicians across the country, possibly due to heavy demands for medical care of Civil War veterans, leading a new generation of women — including Crumpler — to pursue an M.D., which she earned in 1864 from New England Female Medical College.
"It was a significant achievement at the time because she was in the first generation of women of color to break into medical school, fight racism and sexism," said Manon Parry, curator at the National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division. "It was common theme that minority females went in to the profession to provide medical care for underserved communities."
After the war, Crumpler moved to Richmond, Va., where her main focus was on the health needs of freed slaves. In her work with other black doctors, she tended to large groups of the poor and destitute that would have had little access to medical care and a new path was forged for healthcare in underserved communities. Her experience there, and later in Boston, led her to publish her now-renown Book of Medical Discourses In Two Parts, one of the first known medical writings by an African American and an early guidebook on public health.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/03.html
R E B E C C A ∙ L E E ∙ C R U M P L E R
A ∙ M e d i c a l ∙ M i l e s t o n e
Because medical practitioners focus more on their patients than any notoriety, historical figures in medicine are often rendered obscure. Such is the case of Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African American woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S.
Crumpler was born in 1831 and raised by an aunt who spent much of her time caring for infirm neighbors. The aunt likely influenced her choice to go into the medical profession, especially since medical care for the needs of poor blacks was almost non-existant during the antebellum years.
Between 1852 and 1860, Crumpler worked as a nurse in Charlestown, Mass. However, a wider door had been opened for women physicians across the country, possibly due to heavy demands for medical care of Civil War veterans, leading a new generation of women — including Crumpler — to pursue an M.D., which she earned in 1864 from New England Female Medical College.
"It was a significant achievement at the time because she was in the first generation of women of color to break into medical school, fight racism and sexism," said Manon Parry, curator at the National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division. "It was common theme that minority females went in to the profession to provide medical care for underserved communities."
After the war, Crumpler moved to Richmond, Va., where her main focus was on the health needs of freed slaves. In her work with other black doctors, she tended to large groups of the poor and destitute that would have had little access to medical care and a new path was forged for healthcare in underserved communities. Her experience there, and later in Boston, led her to publish her now-renown Book of Medical Discourses In Two Parts, one of the first known medical writings by an African American and an early guidebook on public health.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/03.html
Last edited:
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
P H I L I P ∙ E M E A G W A L I
A ∙ C a l c u l a t i n g ∙ M o v e
It's hard to say who invented the Internet. There were many mathematicians and scientists who contributed to its development; computers were sending signals to each other as early as the 1950s. But the Web owes much of its existence to Philip Emeagwali, a math whiz who came up with the formula for allowing a large number of computers to communicate at once.
Emeagwali was born to a poor family in Akure, Nigeria, in 1954. Despite his brain for math, he had to drop out of school because his family, who had become war refugees, could no longer afford to send him. As a young man, he earned a general education certificate from the University of London and later degrees from George Washington University and the University of Maryland, as well as a doctoral fellowship from the University of Michigan.
At Michigan, he participated in the scientific community's debate on how to simulate the detection of oil reservoirs using a supercomputer. Growing up in an oil-rich nation and understanding how oil is drilled, Emeagwali decided to use this problem as the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Borrowing an idea from a science fiction story about predicting the weather, Emeagwali decided that rather than using 8 expensive supercomputers he would employ thousands of microprocessors to do the computation.
The only step left was to find 8 machines and connect them. (Remember, it was the 80s.) Through research, he found a machine called the Connection Machine at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which had sat unused after scientists had given up on figuring out how to make it simulate nuclear explosions. The machine was designed to run 65,536 interconnected microprocessors. In 1987, he applied for and was given permission to use the machine, and remotely from his Ann Arbor, Michigan, location he set the parameters and ran his program. In addition to correctly computing the amount of oil in the simulated reservoir, the machine was able to perform 3.1 billion calculations per second.
The crux of the discovery was that Emeagwali had programmed each of the microprocessors to talk to six neighboring microprocessors at the same time.
The success of this record-breaking experiment meant that there was now a practical and inexpensive way to use machines like this to speak to each other all over the world. Within a few years, the oil industry had seized upon this idea, then called the Hyperball International Network creating a virtual world wide web of ultrafast digital communication.
The discovery earned him the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers' Gordon Bell Prize in 1989, considered the Nobel Prize of computing, and he was later hailed as one of the fathers of the Internet. Since then, he has won more than 100 prizes for his work and Apple computer has used his microprocessor technology in their Power Mac G4 model. Today he lives in Washington with his wife and son.
"The Internet as we know it today did not cross my mind," Emeagwali told TIME. "I was hypothesizing a planetary-sized supercomputer and, broadly speaking, my focus was on how the present creates the future and how our image of the future inspires the present."
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html
P H I L I P ∙ E M E A G W A L I
A ∙ C a l c u l a t i n g ∙ M o v e
It's hard to say who invented the Internet. There were many mathematicians and scientists who contributed to its development; computers were sending signals to each other as early as the 1950s. But the Web owes much of its existence to Philip Emeagwali, a math whiz who came up with the formula for allowing a large number of computers to communicate at once.
Emeagwali was born to a poor family in Akure, Nigeria, in 1954. Despite his brain for math, he had to drop out of school because his family, who had become war refugees, could no longer afford to send him. As a young man, he earned a general education certificate from the University of London and later degrees from George Washington University and the University of Maryland, as well as a doctoral fellowship from the University of Michigan.
At Michigan, he participated in the scientific community's debate on how to simulate the detection of oil reservoirs using a supercomputer. Growing up in an oil-rich nation and understanding how oil is drilled, Emeagwali decided to use this problem as the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Borrowing an idea from a science fiction story about predicting the weather, Emeagwali decided that rather than using 8 expensive supercomputers he would employ thousands of microprocessors to do the computation.
The only step left was to find 8 machines and connect them. (Remember, it was the 80s.) Through research, he found a machine called the Connection Machine at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which had sat unused after scientists had given up on figuring out how to make it simulate nuclear explosions. The machine was designed to run 65,536 interconnected microprocessors. In 1987, he applied for and was given permission to use the machine, and remotely from his Ann Arbor, Michigan, location he set the parameters and ran his program. In addition to correctly computing the amount of oil in the simulated reservoir, the machine was able to perform 3.1 billion calculations per second.
The crux of the discovery was that Emeagwali had programmed each of the microprocessors to talk to six neighboring microprocessors at the same time.
The success of this record-breaking experiment meant that there was now a practical and inexpensive way to use machines like this to speak to each other all over the world. Within a few years, the oil industry had seized upon this idea, then called the Hyperball International Network creating a virtual world wide web of ultrafast digital communication.
The discovery earned him the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers' Gordon Bell Prize in 1989, considered the Nobel Prize of computing, and he was later hailed as one of the fathers of the Internet. Since then, he has won more than 100 prizes for his work and Apple computer has used his microprocessor technology in their Power Mac G4 model. Today he lives in Washington with his wife and son.
"The Internet as we know it today did not cross my mind," Emeagwali told TIME. "I was hypothesizing a planetary-sized supercomputer and, broadly speaking, my focus was on how the present creates the future and how our image of the future inspires the present."
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
D R . ∙ S O L O M O N ∙ C A R T E R ∙ F U L L E R
M i n d ∙ M e n d e r
For years, the degenerative brain illness that came to be known as Alzheimer's Disease was barely understood. Doctors struggled to determine the causes, why it affected the elderly, and most importantly, how it could be treated. In 1904 noted German psychiatrist Dr. Alois Alzheimer invited five foreign doctors to be his graduate research assistants at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital in Munich. One of them was an American: Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller.
Fuller, born in Liberia in 1872, was the grandson of an American slave who had purchased his freedom and emigrated to Africa. Fuller was a graduate of Boston University Medical School and eventually worked as a pathologist at Westborough State Hospital for the Insane, becoming the nation's first black psychiatrist.
Fuller arrived in Germany thirsting for medical training he felt he could not receive in the U.S. But biographies written about him tell little of his activities there, except that a cash-strapped Alzheimer relied on his students to carry out much of his lab work, thereby making hefty contributions to research on brain disorders.
Alzheimer had already studied a 51-year-old patient who exhibited symptoms of the mysterious disease. In 1907, Fuller examined the brain tissues of cadavers who had a variety of mental disorders and found plaques called amyloids in them. After more research, he found one that matched what Alzheimer had originally described. He wrote that the cases supported Alzheimer's discovery of a particular form of dementia and that it was not due to senility, but rather an actual disease. The research proved to be a watershed in the study of the disorder and Fuller's name was forever linked with modern understanding of the ailment.
In 1919, Fuller left Westborough for Boston University Medical School to teach pathology and worked there for 34 years until blindness caused by diabetes forced him to retire. Despite his condition, he practiced privately from his Boston home until he succumbed to his illness in 1953.
In 1974, in dedication to Fuller's work in neuropathology, Boston University opened the Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center, which provides psychiatric outpatient services.
"Today there are not that many black psychiatrists who are professors in medical schools," says Dr. Annelle Primm, director of the American Psychiatric Association's Office of Minority and National Affairs. "When you put his accomplishments in that context, he was way ahead of his time."
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/05.html
D R . ∙ S O L O M O N ∙ C A R T E R ∙ F U L L E R
M i n d ∙ M e n d e r
For years, the degenerative brain illness that came to be known as Alzheimer's Disease was barely understood. Doctors struggled to determine the causes, why it affected the elderly, and most importantly, how it could be treated. In 1904 noted German psychiatrist Dr. Alois Alzheimer invited five foreign doctors to be his graduate research assistants at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital in Munich. One of them was an American: Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller.
Fuller, born in Liberia in 1872, was the grandson of an American slave who had purchased his freedom and emigrated to Africa. Fuller was a graduate of Boston University Medical School and eventually worked as a pathologist at Westborough State Hospital for the Insane, becoming the nation's first black psychiatrist.
Fuller arrived in Germany thirsting for medical training he felt he could not receive in the U.S. But biographies written about him tell little of his activities there, except that a cash-strapped Alzheimer relied on his students to carry out much of his lab work, thereby making hefty contributions to research on brain disorders.
Alzheimer had already studied a 51-year-old patient who exhibited symptoms of the mysterious disease. In 1907, Fuller examined the brain tissues of cadavers who had a variety of mental disorders and found plaques called amyloids in them. After more research, he found one that matched what Alzheimer had originally described. He wrote that the cases supported Alzheimer's discovery of a particular form of dementia and that it was not due to senility, but rather an actual disease. The research proved to be a watershed in the study of the disorder and Fuller's name was forever linked with modern understanding of the ailment.
In 1919, Fuller left Westborough for Boston University Medical School to teach pathology and worked there for 34 years until blindness caused by diabetes forced him to retire. Despite his condition, he practiced privately from his Boston home until he succumbed to his illness in 1953.
In 1974, in dedication to Fuller's work in neuropathology, Boston University opened the Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center, which provides psychiatric outpatient services.
"Today there are not that many black psychiatrists who are professors in medical schools," says Dr. Annelle Primm, director of the American Psychiatric Association's Office of Minority and National Affairs. "When you put his accomplishments in that context, he was way ahead of his time."
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/05.html
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
R O B E R T ∙ J O H N S O N
B l u e s T r a v e l e r
The history of music is littered with tragic figures. But the ultimate star-crossed musical genius was a Delta bluesman named Robert Johnson who laid the early framework of rock and roll decades before that term was even imagined.
∙
By 1933, Johnson had remarried and began playing the guitar professionally. He once related the tale of selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for his talent. Johnson tells the story in his song "Crossroads Blues."
Playing for tips up and down the Delta, Johnson gained in popularity. But as he grew in fame, he became a noted philanderer. He would also walk off in the middle of performances and not be seen or heard from for weeks at a time.
In 1936, he was put in contact with Columbia Records talent scout Ernie Oertle, who took him to San Antonio, Tex., where Johnson recorded classics including "Sweet Home Chicago," "There's A Hell Hound On My Trail," and his signature "Terraplane Blues."
Johnson began to tour nationally and became known for his unique voice and halting guitar rifts. But in 1938, as the legend goes, the devil caught up with him. While playing at a juke joint, he flirted with a woman whose husband became jealous and the man laced Johnson's whiskey with strychnine. Although he became violently ill, Johnson played until he collapsed. He died four days later at age 27, although conflicting stories say he survived the poisoning and died later of pneumonia.
There are at least two Mississippi gravesites that bear his name leaving questions about his passing and burial. "The reason that it's so powerful a story is because it is the outline of the tragic side of the music that followed," said music journalist Alan Light. "Some knew him as a musician, others by legend, but his shadow touches everyone who came out of that time and place."
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/06.html
R O B E R T ∙ J O H N S O N
B l u e s T r a v e l e r
The history of music is littered with tragic figures. But the ultimate star-crossed musical genius was a Delta bluesman named Robert Johnson who laid the early framework of rock and roll decades before that term was even imagined.
∙
By 1933, Johnson had remarried and began playing the guitar professionally. He once related the tale of selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for his talent. Johnson tells the story in his song "Crossroads Blues."
Playing for tips up and down the Delta, Johnson gained in popularity. But as he grew in fame, he became a noted philanderer. He would also walk off in the middle of performances and not be seen or heard from for weeks at a time.
In 1936, he was put in contact with Columbia Records talent scout Ernie Oertle, who took him to San Antonio, Tex., where Johnson recorded classics including "Sweet Home Chicago," "There's A Hell Hound On My Trail," and his signature "Terraplane Blues."
Johnson began to tour nationally and became known for his unique voice and halting guitar rifts. But in 1938, as the legend goes, the devil caught up with him. While playing at a juke joint, he flirted with a woman whose husband became jealous and the man laced Johnson's whiskey with strychnine. Although he became violently ill, Johnson played until he collapsed. He died four days later at age 27, although conflicting stories say he survived the poisoning and died later of pneumonia.
There are at least two Mississippi gravesites that bear his name leaving questions about his passing and burial. "The reason that it's so powerful a story is because it is the outline of the tragic side of the music that followed," said music journalist Alan Light. "Some knew him as a musician, others by legend, but his shadow touches everyone who came out of that time and place."
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/06.html
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
F R E D E R I C K ∙ J O N E S
M r . F r e e z e
While at the supermarket, most people take for granted that their food and its additives not only had to be transported from another location, but that it had to be kept at a low temperature to prevent spoilage. Refrigerating food is a very old idea, but up until the middle of the 20th century, nobody had figured out how to transport perishables over a long distance. Frederick Jones found a way and transformed American industry.
Jones was born in 1892 just outside of Cincinnati. Orphaned at age nine, Jones lived with a Catholic priest who sparked his interest in mechanics. But unhappy with the rigors of a seminary, he ran away at 11 and got a job in an auto shop, where he turned out to be a natural mechanic. By age 15, he was helping to manage the garage, but got fired a few years later for his dual enthusiasm — and experimentation — with racecar driving.
Returning from service in World War I to Hallock, Minn., Jones worked as the town's movie projectionist and designed devices that adapted silent film to audio stock, and eventually developed equipment that further advanced film soundtracks.
One day, Joseph Numero, the owner of a Minneapolis company that made sound equipment for theaters, noticed Jones' skills and hired him to help keep up with the rapid changes in the film industry. Not only did Jones put Numero ahead of the business, he was also granted a patent for a ticket machine that returned change to customers.
During the summer of 1938, Jones began to wonder why nobody had invented air conditioning for cars, an idea he took to a then un-interested Numero. But his mind changed when a golfing buddy complained that he couldn't ship perishable foods, to which Numero jokingly replied that he should put a refrigerator in his truck.
Numero's friend returned with an aluminum truck and showed it to Jones who said a transportation refrigerator could be developed, mounted to the vehicle and built to withstand shocks. After Jones received the patent in 1940, the system was adapted to ships and rail cars, spawning entire industries based on the new ability to transport perishable food.
Numero sold his film equipment company to go into business with Jones and the two formed the U.S. Thermo Control Company, which later became the Minneapolis-based Thermo King Corp. He later modified the device so that food and blood supply could be dropped behind enemy lines for waiting troops in World War II.
In total Jones was granted more than 60 patents for inventions including a defroster, a two-cycle gas engine, and a thermostat system. He later served as an consultant to both the U.S. Defense Department and the U.S. Bureau of Standards on refrigeration. Thirty years after his death in 1961, Jones was posthumously awarded the National Medal of Technology, engineering's highest honor.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/07.html
F R E D E R I C K ∙ J O N E S
M r . F r e e z e
While at the supermarket, most people take for granted that their food and its additives not only had to be transported from another location, but that it had to be kept at a low temperature to prevent spoilage. Refrigerating food is a very old idea, but up until the middle of the 20th century, nobody had figured out how to transport perishables over a long distance. Frederick Jones found a way and transformed American industry.
Jones was born in 1892 just outside of Cincinnati. Orphaned at age nine, Jones lived with a Catholic priest who sparked his interest in mechanics. But unhappy with the rigors of a seminary, he ran away at 11 and got a job in an auto shop, where he turned out to be a natural mechanic. By age 15, he was helping to manage the garage, but got fired a few years later for his dual enthusiasm — and experimentation — with racecar driving.
Returning from service in World War I to Hallock, Minn., Jones worked as the town's movie projectionist and designed devices that adapted silent film to audio stock, and eventually developed equipment that further advanced film soundtracks.
One day, Joseph Numero, the owner of a Minneapolis company that made sound equipment for theaters, noticed Jones' skills and hired him to help keep up with the rapid changes in the film industry. Not only did Jones put Numero ahead of the business, he was also granted a patent for a ticket machine that returned change to customers.
During the summer of 1938, Jones began to wonder why nobody had invented air conditioning for cars, an idea he took to a then un-interested Numero. But his mind changed when a golfing buddy complained that he couldn't ship perishable foods, to which Numero jokingly replied that he should put a refrigerator in his truck.
Numero's friend returned with an aluminum truck and showed it to Jones who said a transportation refrigerator could be developed, mounted to the vehicle and built to withstand shocks. After Jones received the patent in 1940, the system was adapted to ships and rail cars, spawning entire industries based on the new ability to transport perishable food.
Numero sold his film equipment company to go into business with Jones and the two formed the U.S. Thermo Control Company, which later became the Minneapolis-based Thermo King Corp. He later modified the device so that food and blood supply could be dropped behind enemy lines for waiting troops in World War II.
In total Jones was granted more than 60 patents for inventions including a defroster, a two-cycle gas engine, and a thermostat system. He later served as an consultant to both the U.S. Defense Department and the U.S. Bureau of Standards on refrigeration. Thirty years after his death in 1961, Jones was posthumously awarded the National Medal of Technology, engineering's highest honor.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/07.html
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
E R N E S T ∙ E V E R E T T ∙ J U S T
O m e g a ∙ M a n
Just as the stem cell research debate rages today, the rift between the then-fledgling studies of genetics and embryology raged during the 1930s. The question at the forefront was how genetics should be seen as part of the study of biology. Scientists were also consumed with cross-disciplinary arguments over whether genetics and embryology should be two separate studies. The most significant contributor to the solution of that argument was a South Carolina-born zoologist and embryologist named Ernest Everett Just.
Born in 1883, Just graduated from Dartmouth University and moved to Washington D.C. to teach at Howard University. He soon became head of the biology and zoology departments there, and in 1916, earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago, a year after being awarded the very first Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. He later studied in Europe where he won acclaim in his work with marine life.
Returning to the U.S., he began work on thousands of experiments at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., on the marine mammal cell. In 1922, while conducting thousands of experiments on marine mammal cells at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., he successfully challenged Jacques Loeb's theory of artificial parthenogenesis in which Loeb claimed to cause asexual fertilization of sea urchin eggs by changing certain factors in their environment. This led to a falling out with Loeb, but undaunted, Just persevered saying — and proving — that factors aside, cells performing this type fertilization do it naturally and they have all the tools they need within their own ectoplasm. He also insisted that lab factors for egg experimentation should be as close as possible to those found in nature.
This proof led to his later determination that an egg's structure, no matter what the species, was as important, if not more, as any external factor for development and subsequently evolution. His findings and other Woods Hole works were published in his famed work Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Animals, and gave birth to a new scientific area: ecological developmental biology, which has only been appreciated by the scientific community in recent years.
However, racism and discrimination against black scientists was prevalent at the time and Just believed he would never achieve a tenured position at a major American university. In 1929, he left again for Europe and conducted research and experiments in Naples, was invited to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and moved permanently to Paris in 1938. The next year, Just published his most famous work, The Biology of the Cell Surface which argued that all life derives from a complex organic structure.
"Life," he wrote, "is the harmonious organization of events, the resultant of a communion of structures and reactions." As World War II ensued, Just was briefly imprisoned by Hitler's forces and his already weakened health deteriorated. The U.S. State Department rescued him and returned him to Washington, where he died in 1941.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/08.html
E R N E S T ∙ E V E R E T T ∙ J U S T
O m e g a ∙ M a n
Just as the stem cell research debate rages today, the rift between the then-fledgling studies of genetics and embryology raged during the 1930s. The question at the forefront was how genetics should be seen as part of the study of biology. Scientists were also consumed with cross-disciplinary arguments over whether genetics and embryology should be two separate studies. The most significant contributor to the solution of that argument was a South Carolina-born zoologist and embryologist named Ernest Everett Just.
Born in 1883, Just graduated from Dartmouth University and moved to Washington D.C. to teach at Howard University. He soon became head of the biology and zoology departments there, and in 1916, earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago, a year after being awarded the very first Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. He later studied in Europe where he won acclaim in his work with marine life.
Returning to the U.S., he began work on thousands of experiments at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., on the marine mammal cell. In 1922, while conducting thousands of experiments on marine mammal cells at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., he successfully challenged Jacques Loeb's theory of artificial parthenogenesis in which Loeb claimed to cause asexual fertilization of sea urchin eggs by changing certain factors in their environment. This led to a falling out with Loeb, but undaunted, Just persevered saying — and proving — that factors aside, cells performing this type fertilization do it naturally and they have all the tools they need within their own ectoplasm. He also insisted that lab factors for egg experimentation should be as close as possible to those found in nature.
This proof led to his later determination that an egg's structure, no matter what the species, was as important, if not more, as any external factor for development and subsequently evolution. His findings and other Woods Hole works were published in his famed work Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Animals, and gave birth to a new scientific area: ecological developmental biology, which has only been appreciated by the scientific community in recent years.
However, racism and discrimination against black scientists was prevalent at the time and Just believed he would never achieve a tenured position at a major American university. In 1929, he left again for Europe and conducted research and experiments in Naples, was invited to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and moved permanently to Paris in 1938. The next year, Just published his most famous work, The Biology of the Cell Surface which argued that all life derives from a complex organic structure.
"Life," he wrote, "is the harmonious organization of events, the resultant of a communion of structures and reactions." As World War II ensued, Just was briefly imprisoned by Hitler's forces and his already weakened health deteriorated. The U.S. State Department rescued him and returned him to Washington, where he died in 1941.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/08.html
Last edited:
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
`
S I R ∙ W I L L I A M ∙ A R T H U R ∙ L E W I S
E c o n o m i c s ∙ E x p l a i n e d
The problem of economics in developing nations has always been a very complex equation that no theorist has been able to solve. However disparities between agrarian and industrialized economies and how they can relate and balance each other has its roots in the theories of economist William Arthur Lewis.
Born in 1915 in St. Lucia, Lewis saw firsthand the economic imbalances shouldered by the poor in developing nations. Although a British colony, his country was stricken by abject poverty. An excellent student, he attended the London School of Economics and quickly became professor at the University of Manchester.
At Manchester, the influx of Asian and African students spawned a deeper interest in learning about the economies of their nations. While traveling through Bangkok in 1952, Lewis realized that for the most part wages in poor nations stayed constant while profits soared, which went against the assumption that an investment increase should raise wages and stabilize the capital return rate.
Both problems had the same answer: demographics. It turns out that developing nations were divided into two parts: a traditional agricultural sector that had an abundance of labor but low wages and productivity; and a modern industrial sector which carried higher wages and higher productivity but more demand for labor. Profits continue in the latter as long as investment continues. If labor transfers from the traditional to the modern sector, eventually both production and wages will equalize.
This meant that the fixed labor supply was not really relevant to poor nations with lots of underemployed workers. But if there were dual sectors, it would help the economies of poor countries in the long term because manufacturing, which had a labor shortage, could pull from agricultural, which had an overabundance.
This concept was termed the "Dual Sector Model" and was catalogued in Lewis' signature work Theory of Economic Growth in 1955. Although controversy and debate dogged him throughout his career, these and other theories are now seen as the beginnings of international development economics. Lewis continued on the path of advocating development in poor nations. He was named principal of the University of the West Indies and later became an economic adviser to the fledgling nation of Ghana. He was knighted in 1963.
In 1970, Lewis helped form the Caribbean Development Bank, based in Barbados, which lent money to borrowing member nations to improve their economies based largely on the Dual Sector Model. In 1979, while teaching at Princeton University, he won the Nobel Prize for economics for his pioneering research on developing nations, the first black person to win a Nobel aside from the peace prize. In 1983, he retired and became president of the American Economics Association, where he remained until his death in 1991.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/09.html
`
S I R ∙ W I L L I A M ∙ A R T H U R ∙ L E W I S
E c o n o m i c s ∙ E x p l a i n e d
The problem of economics in developing nations has always been a very complex equation that no theorist has been able to solve. However disparities between agrarian and industrialized economies and how they can relate and balance each other has its roots in the theories of economist William Arthur Lewis.
Born in 1915 in St. Lucia, Lewis saw firsthand the economic imbalances shouldered by the poor in developing nations. Although a British colony, his country was stricken by abject poverty. An excellent student, he attended the London School of Economics and quickly became professor at the University of Manchester.
At Manchester, the influx of Asian and African students spawned a deeper interest in learning about the economies of their nations. While traveling through Bangkok in 1952, Lewis realized that for the most part wages in poor nations stayed constant while profits soared, which went against the assumption that an investment increase should raise wages and stabilize the capital return rate.
Both problems had the same answer: demographics. It turns out that developing nations were divided into two parts: a traditional agricultural sector that had an abundance of labor but low wages and productivity; and a modern industrial sector which carried higher wages and higher productivity but more demand for labor. Profits continue in the latter as long as investment continues. If labor transfers from the traditional to the modern sector, eventually both production and wages will equalize.
This meant that the fixed labor supply was not really relevant to poor nations with lots of underemployed workers. But if there were dual sectors, it would help the economies of poor countries in the long term because manufacturing, which had a labor shortage, could pull from agricultural, which had an overabundance.
This concept was termed the "Dual Sector Model" and was catalogued in Lewis' signature work Theory of Economic Growth in 1955. Although controversy and debate dogged him throughout his career, these and other theories are now seen as the beginnings of international development economics. Lewis continued on the path of advocating development in poor nations. He was named principal of the University of the West Indies and later became an economic adviser to the fledgling nation of Ghana. He was knighted in 1963.
In 1970, Lewis helped form the Caribbean Development Bank, based in Barbados, which lent money to borrowing member nations to improve their economies based largely on the Dual Sector Model. In 1979, while teaching at Princeton University, he won the Nobel Prize for economics for his pioneering research on developing nations, the first black person to win a Nobel aside from the peace prize. In 1983, he retired and became president of the American Economics Association, where he remained until his death in 1991.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/09.html
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
M A G G I E ∙ W A L K E R
B a n k ∙ O n ∙ I t
In the years after the Civil War, Virginia was not an easy place to live. The divide between rich and poor was as wide as ever and the chasm was considerably worse for newly emancipated blacks. Several benevolent societies were founded to help alleviate the postbellum poverty that had swept the country. In Richmond, the Independent Order of St. Luke was created, but what started as charity soon became empowerment because of the tenacity of Maggie Walker.
The daughter of ex-slaves, Walker was born in 1867 and raised in poverty. The family lived in an alley house supported by wages from taking in laundry. A gifted student, Walker finished high school at 16 and began teaching, only to work for the St. Luke organization, which later promoted her to executive secretary. While with St. Luke, she helped it to establish a newspaper, a printing press, an insurance company and a college educational fund. But at the same time, she saw that few if any blacks knew much about finance and investing, and none of them could get loans from white-owned banks. So she set out to convince the community that their money should be pooled and lent out as a savings trust.
In 1903 she convinced those who would listen to her to bring together about $9,400 and opened the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, becoming the first woman of any race to preside over a savings institution at a time when only a handful of women held power in corporations. "We need a savings bank," she said. "Chartered, offered and run by the men and women of this order. Let us have a bank that will take nickels and turn them into dollars."
Along with Madame C.J. Walker (no relation), who was born the same year, she championed the cause of self-sufficient economic empowerment for African Americans. She joined the popular call of black leaders of the day advocating entrepreneurship as a path to true social freedom.
Bank customers deposited a nickel a week into their accounts, and the assets continued to multiply. By 1913, the bank had collected $300,000 in assets. By 1920, it had helped to purchase 600 homes. In 1929 the Great Depression struck, crippling financial institutions nationwide. But St. Luke Savings had enough in holdings to absorb all the other local black-owned banks and become Consolidated Bank and Trust, holding assets of $400,000. The bank is still headquartered in Richmond today.
Despite several personal hardships — including her son being tried and acquitted for the accidental killing of her husband, Armstead — and suffering from diabetes, which resulted in her being confined to a wheelchair, she continued as a philanthropist and civil rights activist, holding executive positions in the NAACP and the National Urban League until her death in 1934.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/10.html
M A G G I E ∙ W A L K E R
B a n k ∙ O n ∙ I t
In the years after the Civil War, Virginia was not an easy place to live. The divide between rich and poor was as wide as ever and the chasm was considerably worse for newly emancipated blacks. Several benevolent societies were founded to help alleviate the postbellum poverty that had swept the country. In Richmond, the Independent Order of St. Luke was created, but what started as charity soon became empowerment because of the tenacity of Maggie Walker.
The daughter of ex-slaves, Walker was born in 1867 and raised in poverty. The family lived in an alley house supported by wages from taking in laundry. A gifted student, Walker finished high school at 16 and began teaching, only to work for the St. Luke organization, which later promoted her to executive secretary. While with St. Luke, she helped it to establish a newspaper, a printing press, an insurance company and a college educational fund. But at the same time, she saw that few if any blacks knew much about finance and investing, and none of them could get loans from white-owned banks. So she set out to convince the community that their money should be pooled and lent out as a savings trust.
In 1903 she convinced those who would listen to her to bring together about $9,400 and opened the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, becoming the first woman of any race to preside over a savings institution at a time when only a handful of women held power in corporations. "We need a savings bank," she said. "Chartered, offered and run by the men and women of this order. Let us have a bank that will take nickels and turn them into dollars."
Along with Madame C.J. Walker (no relation), who was born the same year, she championed the cause of self-sufficient economic empowerment for African Americans. She joined the popular call of black leaders of the day advocating entrepreneurship as a path to true social freedom.
Bank customers deposited a nickel a week into their accounts, and the assets continued to multiply. By 1913, the bank had collected $300,000 in assets. By 1920, it had helped to purchase 600 homes. In 1929 the Great Depression struck, crippling financial institutions nationwide. But St. Luke Savings had enough in holdings to absorb all the other local black-owned banks and become Consolidated Bank and Trust, holding assets of $400,000. The bank is still headquartered in Richmond today.
Despite several personal hardships — including her son being tried and acquitted for the accidental killing of her husband, Armstead — and suffering from diabetes, which resulted in her being confined to a wheelchair, she continued as a philanthropist and civil rights activist, holding executive positions in the NAACP and the National Urban League until her death in 1934.
http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/10.html
Last edited:
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
Excellent thread............
Excellent thread............
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
Beautiful!!! I need to leave the main board and hang over here more often. LOL
Beautiful!!! I need to leave the main board and hang over here more often. LOL
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
great post
great post
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
great thread. great info.
thanks for this.
great thread. great info.
thanks for this.
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
Knowledge....
Greatly appreciated. Black History, not just in one month but 365 days a year. Here's my contribution.
(February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967)
Born in Joplin, Missouri, James Langston Hughes was a member of an abolitionist family. He was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, brother of John Mercer Langston, who was the first Black American to be elected to public office, in 1855. Hughes attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, but began writing poetry in the eighth grade, and was selected as Class Poet. His father didn't think he would be able to make a living at writing, and encouraged him to pursue a more practical career. He paid his son's tuition to Columbia University on the grounds he study engineering. After a short time, Langston dropped out of the program with a B+ average; all the while he continued writing poetry. His first published poem was also one of his most famous, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", and it appeared in Brownie's Book. Later, his poems, short plays, essays and short stories appeared in the NAACP publication Crisis Magazine and in Opportunity Magazine and other publications.
One of Hughes' finest essays appeared in the Nation in 1926, entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain". It spoke of Black writers and poets, "who would surrender racial pride in the name of a false integration," where a talented Black writer would prefer to be considered a poet, not a Black poet, which to Hughes meant he subconsciously wanted to write like a white poet. Hughes argued, "no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself." He wrote in this essay, "We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too... If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves."
In 1923, Hughes traveled abroad on a freighter to the Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, and later to Italy and France, Russia and Spain. One of his favorite pastimes whether abroad or in Washington, D.C. or Harlem, New York was sitting in the clubs listening to blues, jazz and writing poetry. Through these experiences a new rhythm emerged in his writing, and a series of poems such as "The Weary Blues" were penned. He returned to Harlem, in 1924, the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this period, his work was frequently published and his writing flourished. In 1925 he moved to Washington, D.C., still spending more time in blues and jazz clubs. He said, "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street...(these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going." At this same time, Hughes accepted a job with Dr. Carter G. Woodson, editor of the Journal of Negro Life and History and founder of Black History Week in 1926. He returned to his beloved Harlem later that year.
Langston Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. degree in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Lit.D by his alma mater; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1940. Based on a conversation with a man he knew in a Harlem bar, he created a character know as My Simple Minded Friend in a series of essays in the form of a dialogue. In 1950, he named this lovable character Jess B. Simple, and authored a series of books on him.
Langston Hughes was a prolific writer. In the forty-odd years between his first book in 1926 and his death in 1967, he devoted his life to writing and lecturing. He wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of "editorial" and "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts and dozens of magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven anthologies. The long and distinguished list of Hughes' works includes: Not Without Laughter (1930); The Big Sea (1940); I Wonder As I Wander" (1956), his autobiographies. His collections of poetry include: The Weary Blues (1926); The Negro Mother and other Dramatic Recitations (1931); The Dream Keeper (1932); Shakespeare In Harlem (1942); Fields of Wonder (1947); One Way Ticket (1947); The First Book of Jazz (1955); Tambourines To Glory (1958); and Selected Poems (1959); The Best of Simple (1961). He edited several anthologies in an attempt to popularize black authors and their works. Some of these are: An African Treasury (1960); Poems from Black Africa (1963); New Negro Poets: USA (1964) and The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers (1967).
Published posthumously were: Five Plays By Langston Hughes (1968); The Panther and The Lash: Poems of Our Times (1969) and Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Writings of Social Protest (1973); The Sweet Flypaper of Life with Roy DeCarava (1984).
Langston Hughes died of cancer on May 22, 1967. His residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission. His block of East 127th Street was renamed "Langston Hughes Place" .
By: Andrew P. Jackson (Sekou Molefi Baako)
"Hey, black child do you know who you are? Who you really are? Do you know you can be what you want to be, if you try to be, what you can be"
A piece of his poem which inspires me everyday. Great post
Knowledge....
Greatly appreciated. Black History, not just in one month but 365 days a year. Here's my contribution.
(February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967)
Born in Joplin, Missouri, James Langston Hughes was a member of an abolitionist family. He was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, brother of John Mercer Langston, who was the first Black American to be elected to public office, in 1855. Hughes attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, but began writing poetry in the eighth grade, and was selected as Class Poet. His father didn't think he would be able to make a living at writing, and encouraged him to pursue a more practical career. He paid his son's tuition to Columbia University on the grounds he study engineering. After a short time, Langston dropped out of the program with a B+ average; all the while he continued writing poetry. His first published poem was also one of his most famous, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", and it appeared in Brownie's Book. Later, his poems, short plays, essays and short stories appeared in the NAACP publication Crisis Magazine and in Opportunity Magazine and other publications.
One of Hughes' finest essays appeared in the Nation in 1926, entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain". It spoke of Black writers and poets, "who would surrender racial pride in the name of a false integration," where a talented Black writer would prefer to be considered a poet, not a Black poet, which to Hughes meant he subconsciously wanted to write like a white poet. Hughes argued, "no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself." He wrote in this essay, "We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too... If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves."
In 1923, Hughes traveled abroad on a freighter to the Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, and later to Italy and France, Russia and Spain. One of his favorite pastimes whether abroad or in Washington, D.C. or Harlem, New York was sitting in the clubs listening to blues, jazz and writing poetry. Through these experiences a new rhythm emerged in his writing, and a series of poems such as "The Weary Blues" were penned. He returned to Harlem, in 1924, the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this period, his work was frequently published and his writing flourished. In 1925 he moved to Washington, D.C., still spending more time in blues and jazz clubs. He said, "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street...(these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going." At this same time, Hughes accepted a job with Dr. Carter G. Woodson, editor of the Journal of Negro Life and History and founder of Black History Week in 1926. He returned to his beloved Harlem later that year.
Langston Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. degree in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Lit.D by his alma mater; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1940. Based on a conversation with a man he knew in a Harlem bar, he created a character know as My Simple Minded Friend in a series of essays in the form of a dialogue. In 1950, he named this lovable character Jess B. Simple, and authored a series of books on him.
Langston Hughes was a prolific writer. In the forty-odd years between his first book in 1926 and his death in 1967, he devoted his life to writing and lecturing. He wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of "editorial" and "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts and dozens of magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven anthologies. The long and distinguished list of Hughes' works includes: Not Without Laughter (1930); The Big Sea (1940); I Wonder As I Wander" (1956), his autobiographies. His collections of poetry include: The Weary Blues (1926); The Negro Mother and other Dramatic Recitations (1931); The Dream Keeper (1932); Shakespeare In Harlem (1942); Fields of Wonder (1947); One Way Ticket (1947); The First Book of Jazz (1955); Tambourines To Glory (1958); and Selected Poems (1959); The Best of Simple (1961). He edited several anthologies in an attempt to popularize black authors and their works. Some of these are: An African Treasury (1960); Poems from Black Africa (1963); New Negro Poets: USA (1964) and The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers (1967).
Published posthumously were: Five Plays By Langston Hughes (1968); The Panther and The Lash: Poems of Our Times (1969) and Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Writings of Social Protest (1973); The Sweet Flypaper of Life with Roy DeCarava (1984).
Langston Hughes died of cancer on May 22, 1967. His residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission. His block of East 127th Street was renamed "Langston Hughes Place" .
By: Andrew P. Jackson (Sekou Molefi Baako)
"Hey, black child do you know who you are? Who you really are? Do you know you can be what you want to be, if you try to be, what you can be"
A piece of his poem which inspires me everyday. Great post
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
Lorraine ∙ C ∙ Miller
Milestone ∙ of ∙ Achievement' ∙ on ∙ the ∙ Hill
Miller Is the First African American To Be House Clerk
</font size>
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 20, 2007; Page A11
At 6 feet 2 inches tall, Lorraine C. Miller cuts a striking figure in the polished hallways of the U.S. Capitol. Last week, the woman with regal bearing gained another, more lasting distinction. She was sworn in as clerk of the House of Representatives, the first African American to hold the seat since it was created in 1789.
"This is another milestone of achievement, not just of black people but of all people," said Thomas Tyler, who directs the senior choir at the Shiloh Baptist Church in the District, where Miller sings first alto.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tapped Miller for the job, citing her work ethic, knowledge of the Hill and ability to make connections across party lines, in addition to her trailblazer status.
"I was the first woman, and I had a responsibility to do other firsts," Pelosi said at a recent reception honoring Miller. "I've done a lot of things since I became speaker, but none have given me more pride and been more thrilling to me than to swear in Lorraine Miller."
Miller had been among Pelosi's senior advisers. After the Democrats won control of Congress in November and it was clear that Pelosi would ascend to the House speaker's job, members of her staff began lobbying for various appointments. All except Miller.
"I sought her out and asked if she wanted the job," Pelosi said. "That speaks to her modesty, that she didn't put her name out, that I had to ask her if she was interested."
She was, of course.
The clerk runs the day-to-day operations of the House of Representatives, handling everything from stationery supplies to the voting process on the House floor to managing the page program. She said she intends to put special focus on the page program, which has been plagued by scandal, with former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigning after sending inappropriate computer messages to male former pages.
The nonpartisan office oversees nine divisions that employ 276 people. It pays $163,700 a year and comes with one of the best offices in the Capitol, boasting a commanding view of the Mall and the Washington Monument.
But Miller's rise to become an officer of the House did not begin with great promise.
She started her working life as a high school government teacher in Fort Worth. She was more intrigued by politics than teaching, however, and once a year for 10 years she wrote to then-Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.) and inquired about openings on his staff. Each time, she received a standard rejection letter.
Eventually, she moved to Washington, enrolled in a graduate program at American University and campaigned until she landed a job in Wright's office. "She doesn't take no for an answer, so you might as well save time" is how Pelosi described Miller's tenacity.
In her first two weeks in Wright's office, Miller answered telephones until one day a caller asked for the chief of staff. Miller said he was unavailable. "Tell him it's Jim," the caller said. "Jim who?" she asked.
She was reassigned shortly thereafter but quickly memorized the sound of Wright's voice. She developed a habit of memorizing the voices of House members and now can identify most by voice, Republican or Democrat.
Miller worked for Wright for 11 years, including while he was speaker. She also worked for another speaker, Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), as well as Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). She worked for two years in the White House during the Clinton administration as deputy assistant to the president, serving as his liaison to the House, and joined the Federal Trade Commission and later the Federal Communications Commission.
She still owns a house in Forth Worth, where she returns once a month, as well as her family's cattle farm in East Texas. "I love going down there," she said of the farm. "The smell of cow manure and pine needles. It's so relaxed, so different from life here. The only worry is what are you going to bring to the church social."
Though she maintains her Texas roots, and cheers for the Dallas Cowboys, Miller has made connections in the District. Since 2004, she has served as president of the D.C. chapter of the NAACP.
Family, fellow churchgoers and a large contingent of friends from Fort Worth, including two Texas state legislators, toasted Miller at the evening reception. Several wore yellow roses, as in "The Yellow Rose of Texas," pinned to their lapels.
"She will now have two names -- Madam Clerk and Poopie Pie," said Miller's sister, Marietta. The two women call each other best friend and share a house in LeDroit Park, where Marietta says it is not unusual for Lorraine to return from work at 2:30 a.m.
Miller is so garrulous that she repeatedly interrupted her own remarks at the party to call out to familiar faces in the room. "If a young person could look at my journey and feel inspired to achieve . . . Hi, Ernie," she said. "Hi, Dwight -- I remember Dwight when he attended dental school at Howard. He worked at Church's Fried Chicken. He makes grand theft money now," she told the howling crowd.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...7/02/19/AR2007021900858_2.html?referrer=email
Lorraine ∙ C ∙ Miller
Milestone ∙ of ∙ Achievement' ∙ on ∙ the ∙ Hill
Miller Is the First African American To Be House Clerk
</font size>
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 20, 2007; Page A11
At 6 feet 2 inches tall, Lorraine C. Miller cuts a striking figure in the polished hallways of the U.S. Capitol. Last week, the woman with regal bearing gained another, more lasting distinction. She was sworn in as clerk of the House of Representatives, the first African American to hold the seat since it was created in 1789.
"This is another milestone of achievement, not just of black people but of all people," said Thomas Tyler, who directs the senior choir at the Shiloh Baptist Church in the District, where Miller sings first alto.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tapped Miller for the job, citing her work ethic, knowledge of the Hill and ability to make connections across party lines, in addition to her trailblazer status.
"I was the first woman, and I had a responsibility to do other firsts," Pelosi said at a recent reception honoring Miller. "I've done a lot of things since I became speaker, but none have given me more pride and been more thrilling to me than to swear in Lorraine Miller."
Miller had been among Pelosi's senior advisers. After the Democrats won control of Congress in November and it was clear that Pelosi would ascend to the House speaker's job, members of her staff began lobbying for various appointments. All except Miller.
"I sought her out and asked if she wanted the job," Pelosi said. "That speaks to her modesty, that she didn't put her name out, that I had to ask her if she was interested."
She was, of course.
The clerk runs the day-to-day operations of the House of Representatives, handling everything from stationery supplies to the voting process on the House floor to managing the page program. She said she intends to put special focus on the page program, which has been plagued by scandal, with former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigning after sending inappropriate computer messages to male former pages.
The nonpartisan office oversees nine divisions that employ 276 people. It pays $163,700 a year and comes with one of the best offices in the Capitol, boasting a commanding view of the Mall and the Washington Monument.
But Miller's rise to become an officer of the House did not begin with great promise.
She started her working life as a high school government teacher in Fort Worth. She was more intrigued by politics than teaching, however, and once a year for 10 years she wrote to then-Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.) and inquired about openings on his staff. Each time, she received a standard rejection letter.
Eventually, she moved to Washington, enrolled in a graduate program at American University and campaigned until she landed a job in Wright's office. "She doesn't take no for an answer, so you might as well save time" is how Pelosi described Miller's tenacity.
In her first two weeks in Wright's office, Miller answered telephones until one day a caller asked for the chief of staff. Miller said he was unavailable. "Tell him it's Jim," the caller said. "Jim who?" she asked.
She was reassigned shortly thereafter but quickly memorized the sound of Wright's voice. She developed a habit of memorizing the voices of House members and now can identify most by voice, Republican or Democrat.
Miller worked for Wright for 11 years, including while he was speaker. She also worked for another speaker, Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), as well as Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). She worked for two years in the White House during the Clinton administration as deputy assistant to the president, serving as his liaison to the House, and joined the Federal Trade Commission and later the Federal Communications Commission.
She still owns a house in Forth Worth, where she returns once a month, as well as her family's cattle farm in East Texas. "I love going down there," she said of the farm. "The smell of cow manure and pine needles. It's so relaxed, so different from life here. The only worry is what are you going to bring to the church social."
Though she maintains her Texas roots, and cheers for the Dallas Cowboys, Miller has made connections in the District. Since 2004, she has served as president of the D.C. chapter of the NAACP.
Family, fellow churchgoers and a large contingent of friends from Fort Worth, including two Texas state legislators, toasted Miller at the evening reception. Several wore yellow roses, as in "The Yellow Rose of Texas," pinned to their lapels.
"She will now have two names -- Madam Clerk and Poopie Pie," said Miller's sister, Marietta. The two women call each other best friend and share a house in LeDroit Park, where Marietta says it is not unusual for Lorraine to return from work at 2:30 a.m.
Miller is so garrulous that she repeatedly interrupted her own remarks at the party to call out to familiar faces in the room. "If a young person could look at my journey and feel inspired to achieve . . . Hi, Ernie," she said. "Hi, Dwight -- I remember Dwight when he attended dental school at Howard. He worked at Church's Fried Chicken. He makes grand theft money now," she told the howling crowd.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...7/02/19/AR2007021900858_2.html?referrer=email
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Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
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Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
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First Black West Point Graduate Honored
By JOHN MILBURN Associated Press Writer
March 30,2007 | FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- Henry O. Flipper stoically endured hate and harassment to become the first black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, only to be drummed out of the Army after white officers accused him of embezzlement.
He didn't see his name cleared in his lifetime, but the Army took another step in honoring his legacy Friday with the dedication of a bust of him at the Buffalo Soldier Monument at Fort Leavenworth.
Because of rain, the ceremony was moved inside and only photographs of the bust were shown, although family members later went to view the memorial.
Carla Flipper, his great grandniece, stroked the face of the bust, sheltered by a tent from the rain. A concrete pedestal chronicles his military and civilian careers.
"I'm very proud of him and admire him for all of his perseverance and the legacy that he left for us," she said. "His work truly shows a man who was truly blessed and wanted to serve his country."
She said his courage and strength came from his parents, an inspiration generations later.
Born a slave in Thomasville, Ga., in 1856, Flipper was not the first black at West Point, but he was the first to endure four years of hardships and receive his commission. He graduated in 1877, just 12 years after the Civil War.
"Besides having a strong academic background, someone of obvious academic talents, he was a very stoic individual," historian Steve Grove said. "He didn't hit back. Flipper would just bear it."
Grove said Flipper wrote in his autobiography that he "was above that kind of behavior." Despite public ridicule and harassment from white cadets, Flipper was known to tutor whites in private to help them with their studies.
"He was an amazing individual. It was amazing how mature he was," Grove said.
Flipper served at various Southwest posts as a scout, an engineer surveyor and construction supervisor, post adjutant, acting assistant and post quartermaster and commissary officer.
At Fort Davis, Texas, in 1881, Flipper's career took a dire turn when his commander accused him of embezzling $3,792 from commissary funds. Flipper initially discovered the funds missing from his custody and concealed their disappearance from superiors, hoping the money would return.
He was court-martialed, acquitted of embezzlement but convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer, and dishonorably discharged.
He would later write in a letter to a congressman that the crime "of being a Negro was, in my case, more heinous than deceiving a commanding officer."
Flipper went on to a successful civilian career as an engineer and expert in Spanish and Mexican land law, wrote several books and worked as a special assistant to the U.S. interior secretary. He spent decades trying to clear his name, and his family continued the fight after his death in 1940.
In 1976, an Army board commuted Flipper's dismissal to a good conduct discharge, concluding that his conviction and punishment were "unduly harsh and unjust." In 1999, President Clinton granted him a full pardon.
Lt. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck, superintendent at West Point, said the academy has bestowed the Henry Flipper Award to graduates who overcome challenges for the past quarter-century.
http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8O6OTDG2.html
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H e n r y O. F l i p p e r</font size>
First Black West Point Graduate Honored
By JOHN MILBURN Associated Press Writer
March 30,2007 | FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- Henry O. Flipper stoically endured hate and harassment to become the first black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, only to be drummed out of the Army after white officers accused him of embezzlement.
He didn't see his name cleared in his lifetime, but the Army took another step in honoring his legacy Friday with the dedication of a bust of him at the Buffalo Soldier Monument at Fort Leavenworth.
Because of rain, the ceremony was moved inside and only photographs of the bust were shown, although family members later went to view the memorial.
Carla Flipper, his great grandniece, stroked the face of the bust, sheltered by a tent from the rain. A concrete pedestal chronicles his military and civilian careers.
"I'm very proud of him and admire him for all of his perseverance and the legacy that he left for us," she said. "His work truly shows a man who was truly blessed and wanted to serve his country."
She said his courage and strength came from his parents, an inspiration generations later.
Born a slave in Thomasville, Ga., in 1856, Flipper was not the first black at West Point, but he was the first to endure four years of hardships and receive his commission. He graduated in 1877, just 12 years after the Civil War.
"Besides having a strong academic background, someone of obvious academic talents, he was a very stoic individual," historian Steve Grove said. "He didn't hit back. Flipper would just bear it."
Grove said Flipper wrote in his autobiography that he "was above that kind of behavior." Despite public ridicule and harassment from white cadets, Flipper was known to tutor whites in private to help them with their studies.
"He was an amazing individual. It was amazing how mature he was," Grove said.
Flipper served at various Southwest posts as a scout, an engineer surveyor and construction supervisor, post adjutant, acting assistant and post quartermaster and commissary officer.
At Fort Davis, Texas, in 1881, Flipper's career took a dire turn when his commander accused him of embezzling $3,792 from commissary funds. Flipper initially discovered the funds missing from his custody and concealed their disappearance from superiors, hoping the money would return.
He was court-martialed, acquitted of embezzlement but convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer, and dishonorably discharged.
He would later write in a letter to a congressman that the crime "of being a Negro was, in my case, more heinous than deceiving a commanding officer."
Flipper went on to a successful civilian career as an engineer and expert in Spanish and Mexican land law, wrote several books and worked as a special assistant to the U.S. interior secretary. He spent decades trying to clear his name, and his family continued the fight after his death in 1940.
In 1976, an Army board commuted Flipper's dismissal to a good conduct discharge, concluding that his conviction and punishment were "unduly harsh and unjust." In 1999, President Clinton granted him a full pardon.
Lt. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck, superintendent at West Point, said the academy has bestowed the Henry Flipper Award to graduates who overcome challenges for the past quarter-century.
http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8O6OTDG2.html
Re: Unsung Heroes - Black History Month
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I D A ∙ B ∙ W E L L S - B A R N E T T
J o u r n a l i s t ∙ P u b l i s h e r ∙ N e w s E d i t o r ∙
E a r l y C i v i l R i g h t s A c t i v i s t ∙ L e a d e r
A n t i - L y n c h i n g C a m p a i g n
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(1862-1931) Tireless leader of America's anti-lynching crusade
Born of slave parents in 1862, just months before the Emancipation Proclamation, journalist and publisher Ida B. Wells-Barnett rose to the top of her profession to become known as the tireless leader of America’s anti-lynching crusade. Wells-Barnett was born in Holly Springs, Miss., and moved to Memphis at age 16 to teach school and attend Fisk University. Her experiences with racial injustice in Tennessee led her to become a journalist. In 1889, she bought an interest in the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and became its editor. The lynching of three Memphis grocers, one of whom was a friend, catapulted her into action and changed the course of her life. Using the power of her press, she attacked the evils of lynching and urged African Americans to leave the city and to boycott its businesses. While in New York City on business, a mob destroyed her offices and threatened her life. Wells-Barnett moved to New York City, where she became a writer for The New York Age and began investigating lynchings.
Wells-Barnett published two famous pamphlets on lynching, ”Southern Horrors” in 1892 and ”A Red Record” in 1895. ”Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so,” Wells-Barnett explained in an understated tone. In ”A Red Record,” Wells wrote: ”Not all nor nearly all of the murders done by white men during the past thirty years in the South have come to light, but the statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood…”
ONE SEPTEMBER DAY IN 1883, IDA B. WELLS STEPPED aboard a train in Memphis. She was 21 and a public school teacher. After she took a seat and opened a book to read, a conductor demanded that she move to a car designated for black passengers. She refused.
When the conductor grabbed her arm, Wells bit his hand. Hard. "I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back," she would later recall. "As he had already been badly bitten, he didn't try it again by himself." Though she was no more than about five feet tall, it took three men to roust her from the seat. Still, she refused to sit in the other car and got off the train at the next stop.
Wells sued the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad in 1884 for violating equal accommodation statutes-and, incredibly, won. But the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the verdict in a ruling that would lay the groundwork for the "separate but equal" doctrine that kept racial segregation in place for decades.
Her ordeal, with its intriguing parallels to Rosa Parks' civil disobedience aboard a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 72 years later, not only reveals Wells' fierce will but also essentially launched her lifelong, often dangerous struggle to secure the rights of African-Americans.
This fearless woman would do more than anyone to curtail the terrorizing of blacks by lynch mobs. She would also publish a newspaper, help found a number of African-American self-help organizations-including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) advance women's rights and run for the Illinois Senate. Although she pioneered tactics that would become crucial to the civil rights movement decades later, she is not nearly as well known as contemporaries Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. But that is changing.
In 1895, she married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett, publisher of The Chicago Conservator, and settled in Illinois. In Chicago, Wells-Barnett wrote for the Conservator and remained active in civil rights and women’s groups. She died in Chicago on March 25, 1931.
In 1990, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in her honor.
http://www.blackpressusa.com/history/GOG_Article.asp?NewsID=2044
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2002/Ida-B-Wells-Memphis1883.htm
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I D A ∙ B ∙ W E L L S - B A R N E T T
J o u r n a l i s t ∙ P u b l i s h e r ∙ N e w s E d i t o r ∙
E a r l y C i v i l R i g h t s A c t i v i s t ∙ L e a d e r
A n t i - L y n c h i n g C a m p a i g n
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(1862-1931) Tireless leader of America's anti-lynching crusade
Born of slave parents in 1862, just months before the Emancipation Proclamation, journalist and publisher Ida B. Wells-Barnett rose to the top of her profession to become known as the tireless leader of America’s anti-lynching crusade. Wells-Barnett was born in Holly Springs, Miss., and moved to Memphis at age 16 to teach school and attend Fisk University. Her experiences with racial injustice in Tennessee led her to become a journalist. In 1889, she bought an interest in the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and became its editor. The lynching of three Memphis grocers, one of whom was a friend, catapulted her into action and changed the course of her life. Using the power of her press, she attacked the evils of lynching and urged African Americans to leave the city and to boycott its businesses. While in New York City on business, a mob destroyed her offices and threatened her life. Wells-Barnett moved to New York City, where she became a writer for The New York Age and began investigating lynchings.
Wells-Barnett published two famous pamphlets on lynching, ”Southern Horrors” in 1892 and ”A Red Record” in 1895. ”Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so,” Wells-Barnett explained in an understated tone. In ”A Red Record,” Wells wrote: ”Not all nor nearly all of the murders done by white men during the past thirty years in the South have come to light, but the statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood…”
ONE SEPTEMBER DAY IN 1883, IDA B. WELLS STEPPED aboard a train in Memphis. She was 21 and a public school teacher. After she took a seat and opened a book to read, a conductor demanded that she move to a car designated for black passengers. She refused.
When the conductor grabbed her arm, Wells bit his hand. Hard. "I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back," she would later recall. "As he had already been badly bitten, he didn't try it again by himself." Though she was no more than about five feet tall, it took three men to roust her from the seat. Still, she refused to sit in the other car and got off the train at the next stop.
Wells sued the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad in 1884 for violating equal accommodation statutes-and, incredibly, won. But the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the verdict in a ruling that would lay the groundwork for the "separate but equal" doctrine that kept racial segregation in place for decades.
Her ordeal, with its intriguing parallels to Rosa Parks' civil disobedience aboard a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 72 years later, not only reveals Wells' fierce will but also essentially launched her lifelong, often dangerous struggle to secure the rights of African-Americans.
This fearless woman would do more than anyone to curtail the terrorizing of blacks by lynch mobs. She would also publish a newspaper, help found a number of African-American self-help organizations-including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) advance women's rights and run for the Illinois Senate. Although she pioneered tactics that would become crucial to the civil rights movement decades later, she is not nearly as well known as contemporaries Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. But that is changing.
In 1895, she married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett, publisher of The Chicago Conservator, and settled in Illinois. In Chicago, Wells-Barnett wrote for the Conservator and remained active in civil rights and women’s groups. She died in Chicago on March 25, 1931.
In 1990, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in her honor.
http://www.blackpressusa.com/history/GOG_Article.asp?NewsID=2044
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2002/Ida-B-Wells-Memphis1883.htm
Madam C.J. Walker | African-American Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, and Activist
THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF MADAM C.J. WALKER
madamcjwalker.com
M A D A M E ∙ C ∙ J ∙ W A L K E R
F i r s t ∙ W o m a n ∙ M i l l i o n a i r e
i n ∙ t h e ∙ U n i t e d ∙ S t a t e s
Madame C.J. Walker has the notable distinction of being the first woman millionaire of any race on record in the United States. Her popular hair care products brought her fame and wealth in the early 1900s, when African Americans were still struggling to establish themselves in the aftermath of slavery. Walker’s financial success was accompanied by a generous spirit and strong sense of responsibility to her race. Her philanthropy and her efforts to empower others mark her as an extraordinary citizen and human being.
Madame C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867, to a family of sharecroppers in Delta, Louisiana. She helped the family survive by picking cotton along with them. In 1874, yellow fever claimed the lives of both parents, orphaning the Breedlove siblings.
Four years later, Sarah and her sister headed to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to make their living as washerwomen. By age 14, Sarah Breedlove had met and married Jeff McWilliams and soon gave birth to a daughter, Lelia. Shortly thereafter, Jeff McWilliams was killed, leaving his wife Sarah a widow and single mother. Sarah Breedlove McWilliams had scant means of supporting herself and her child, but plenty of drive and determination. She headed north to St. Louis in 1887 and set up shop in the only trade she knew – washing clothes.
McWilliams joined the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, and attended night school to obtain the education she’d had to forego as a child in Mississippi. McWilliams was able to make a little extra money on the side by selling Poro, a hair product made by Annie N. Turnbo Malone. Sarah Breedlove McWilliams was determined to make a better life for herself and her little girl.
While attending a World’s Fair inn 1904, Sarah McWilliams was impressed by the appearance and demeanor of Margaret Murray Washington, wife of Tuskegee founder Booker T. Washington. The struggling young mother took Washington’s example to heart.
The events that followed changed her life forever. McWilliams, who had been plagued by an itchy scalp and breaking hair, allegedly had a dream one night in which the formula for an effective scalp treatment was revealed to her. She sent away for the ingredients and became something of a kitchen chemist, working to develop her own product for sale.
In July of 1905, 37-year-old Sarah McWilliams moved to the bustling young city of Denver, where there was less competition and a growing, largely untapped market in Black hair care. McWilliams worked as a cook to support herself and her daughter while she expanded on her business idea. She developed three products - Wonderful Hair Grower, Glossine and Vegetable Shampoo. She also redesigned the steel hot comb, originally popular in France, and customized it for use on African American hair. In January 4,1906 she married C.J. Walker, a businessman who encouraged her to keep expanding her business. Sarah Breedlove McWilliams took her husband’s name, adding the grand title of “Madame” to the beginning of it. The Mme. C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company was born.
Madame C.J. Walker traveled the country, marketing her products and the Walker hair care method. Walker’s own hair proved to be the best advertisement for her business. She used before and after photographs of herself to show the results. The Black women who were her customers loved the results they were able to achieve with these new products, including the ability to change the texture of their hair through “pressing” with the hot comb. They also likely loved patronizing a business started by someone like themselves.
Walker moved to Pittsburgh in 1908, where she opened a beauty parlor and founded Lelia College for teaching the Walker method. It was the fulfillment of Walker’s dream to help others become self-sufficient. Hundreds of women achieved personal success as Walker hair culturists.
By the time Walker moved to Indiana a few years later, her business was bringing in an average of $3,000 weekly. She became an energetic activist in the interest of her race and of women. She sued the Isis Theater in Indianapolis for racial discrimination and designed a cultural arts center in Philadelphia for African Americans. She demanded the floor at the National Negro Business League convention in 1912, earning the respect of the male audience in attendance. She campaigned against the lynching of Blacks by marching in the streets of Harlem, staged a protest along with other citizens in the White House, and made the largest donation in history at that time to the anti-lynching fund of the NAACP. And, according to Walker’s wishes, a woman was always at the helm during the 78 years that the Walker Manufacturing Company remained in business.
Madam CJ Walker took ill and died at her New York mansion on May 25, 1919. The Madame Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis is a standing monument to her legacy. Walker was honored by the US Postal Service in 1998 with an official stamp bearing her likeness.
The official Madam C.J. Walker web site can be found at http://www.madamcjwalker.com.
Madame CJ Walker biography by Wendy Robinson
http://www.topblacks.com/business/madame-c-j-walker.htm
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Born the youngest of three children, Mae C. Jemison is the child of Charlie and Dorothy Jemison, a maintenance worker and schoolteacher from Chicago Illinois. She graduated from Morgan Park High School in 1973. She continued her education and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1977, while also fulfilling the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts in African-American Studies. She attended medical school and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Cornell University in 1981. While in medical school she traveled to Cuba, Kenya and Thailand, providing primary medical care to people living there.
Dr. Jemison served in the Peace Corps, from January 1983 to June 1985. She was stationed in Sierra Leone and Liberia, West Africa as the area Peace Corps medical officer. There she supervised the pharmacy, laboratory and medical staff. She provided medical care, wrote self-care manuals, developed and implemented guidelines for health and safety issues. She also had contact with and worked in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on research for various vaccines.
In 1985, after returning from the Peace Corps, Dr. Jemison secured a position with the CIGNA Health Plans of California as a general practitioner in Los Angeles, California. There she began attending graduate classes in engineering and applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for admission to the astronaut program. In 1987, her application was accepted as an astronaut candidate; Mae Jemison became one of the fifteen candidates accepted from some 2,000 applicants.
Dr. Jemison successfully completed her astronaut training program in August 1988, becoming the fifth black astronaut and the first black female astronaut in NASA history. In August 1992, SPACELAB J was a successful joint U.S. and Japanese science mission, making Mae Jemison the first black woman in space. The cooperative mission conducted experiments in materials processing and life sciences.
Mae Jemison is outspoken about the impact of technical advances in the black population, and encourages African Americans to pursue careers in science and engineering. Dr. Jemison is based at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Born: October 17, 1956
Birthplace: Decatur, Alabama
http://www.topblacks.com/science/mae-jemison.htm
M A E ∙ C ∙ Jemison
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Born the youngest of three children, Mae C. Jemison is the child of Charlie and Dorothy Jemison, a maintenance worker and schoolteacher from Chicago Illinois. She graduated from Morgan Park High School in 1973. She continued her education and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1977, while also fulfilling the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts in African-American Studies. She attended medical school and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Cornell University in 1981. While in medical school she traveled to Cuba, Kenya and Thailand, providing primary medical care to people living there.
Dr. Jemison served in the Peace Corps, from January 1983 to June 1985. She was stationed in Sierra Leone and Liberia, West Africa as the area Peace Corps medical officer. There she supervised the pharmacy, laboratory and medical staff. She provided medical care, wrote self-care manuals, developed and implemented guidelines for health and safety issues. She also had contact with and worked in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on research for various vaccines.
In 1985, after returning from the Peace Corps, Dr. Jemison secured a position with the CIGNA Health Plans of California as a general practitioner in Los Angeles, California. There she began attending graduate classes in engineering and applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for admission to the astronaut program. In 1987, her application was accepted as an astronaut candidate; Mae Jemison became one of the fifteen candidates accepted from some 2,000 applicants.
Dr. Jemison successfully completed her astronaut training program in August 1988, becoming the fifth black astronaut and the first black female astronaut in NASA history. In August 1992, SPACELAB J was a successful joint U.S. and Japanese science mission, making Mae Jemison the first black woman in space. The cooperative mission conducted experiments in materials processing and life sciences.
Mae Jemison is outspoken about the impact of technical advances in the black population, and encourages African Americans to pursue careers in science and engineering. Dr. Jemison is based at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Born: October 17, 1956
Birthplace: Decatur, Alabama
http://www.topblacks.com/science/mae-jemison.htm
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Dr. Ben Carson has dedicated his life to inspiring others to excel by using their God-given talents. He was born in Detroit, Michigan where his childhood journey was filled with poverty. He struggled with poor grades and a violent temper. After his mother, who only had a third-grade education, challenged him to strive for excellence, Ben rose from the bottom to the top of his class. His achievements earned him academic scholarships to college and medical school.
Today, Dr. Carson is director of pediatric neurosurgery at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Maryland. He is world-renowned for leading a medical team that separated West German conjoined twins in 1987, as well as leading a team of South African doctors in the first successful separation of vertically conjoined twins in 1997. He has refined the techniques for hemispherectomy, a radical brain surgery to stop intractable seizures, and has developed, along with the Hopkins plastic surgery division, a craniofacial program to help children who need combined neurosurgical and plastic surgical reconstruction.
Dr. Carson holds numerous honors and awards, including more than 20 honorary doctorate degrees. He is a member of the board of directors of the Kellogg Company, honored by the Horatio Alger Society, as well as a fellow of the Yale Corporation, the governing body of Yale University.
Dr. Carson’s remarkable story is told in his first book, Gifted Hands. THINK BIG, his second book, encourages others to develop their intellectual potential. His latest book, The Big Picture, offers an up-close look at a professional surgeon’s life -- and his unique perspective on priorities, race, society, success, and living out a life of faith in a complex world. He travels globally to share his knowledge and philosophy with the hope of inspiring people of all ages and educational backgrounds to be -- and do -- their best!
Born: September 18, 1951
Brith Place: Detroit, Michigan
http://www.topblacks.com/medicine/ben-carson.htm
B E N ∙ C A R S O N
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<font size="4"> P e d i a t r i c ∙ N e u r o s u r g e o n
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Dr. Ben Carson has dedicated his life to inspiring others to excel by using their God-given talents. He was born in Detroit, Michigan where his childhood journey was filled with poverty. He struggled with poor grades and a violent temper. After his mother, who only had a third-grade education, challenged him to strive for excellence, Ben rose from the bottom to the top of his class. His achievements earned him academic scholarships to college and medical school.
Today, Dr. Carson is director of pediatric neurosurgery at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Maryland. He is world-renowned for leading a medical team that separated West German conjoined twins in 1987, as well as leading a team of South African doctors in the first successful separation of vertically conjoined twins in 1997. He has refined the techniques for hemispherectomy, a radical brain surgery to stop intractable seizures, and has developed, along with the Hopkins plastic surgery division, a craniofacial program to help children who need combined neurosurgical and plastic surgical reconstruction.
Dr. Carson holds numerous honors and awards, including more than 20 honorary doctorate degrees. He is a member of the board of directors of the Kellogg Company, honored by the Horatio Alger Society, as well as a fellow of the Yale Corporation, the governing body of Yale University.
Dr. Carson’s remarkable story is told in his first book, Gifted Hands. THINK BIG, his second book, encourages others to develop their intellectual potential. His latest book, The Big Picture, offers an up-close look at a professional surgeon’s life -- and his unique perspective on priorities, race, society, success, and living out a life of faith in a complex world. He travels globally to share his knowledge and philosophy with the hope of inspiring people of all ages and educational backgrounds to be -- and do -- their best!
Born: September 18, 1951
Brith Place: Detroit, Michigan
http://www.topblacks.com/medicine/ben-carson.htm
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By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post
August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON — Oliver W. Hill, a Virginia lawyer who helped overturn legal segregation in his native state and was one of the country's foremost civil rights defenders during a six-decade career, died of a heart ailment Sunday at his home in Richmond, Va. He was 100.
Hill was an instrumental member of an NAACP-affiliated legal team that persistently attacked segregation.
He also was a lead lawyer on a Virginia case later incorporated into Brown vs. Board of Education, the 1954 case that resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring segregated schools unlawful.
He lacked the recognition of his Howard University Law School classmate Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Supreme Court justice, but at one time, Hill had 75 civil rights cases pending.
He was estimated to have won $50 million in better pay and infrastructure needs for Virginia's black teachers and students during his career.
Hill, who was raised in Washington, D.C., spent his public life in Richmond, where in 1948 he was the first black person elected to the City Council in 50 years.
Although his term in office was short, his civil rights legacy proved far more enduring because of his role as a lead lawyer in Davis vs. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Va., one of the five cases the U.S. Supreme Court combined into its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.
Marshall was the lead lawyer in the high court case.
Hill's involvement in the Davis case began through his affiliation with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
He worked closely with a team that included Marshall; Howard Law School Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, a mentor to Marshall and Hill; and Spottswood W. Robinson III, a future Howard dean and chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Their goal was to challenge more than the existing "separate but equal" system of public facilities that had been created with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson.
In 1951, Hill and Robinson took up the cause of students at an all-black high school in Farmville, Va., who had gone on a two-week strike to protest the leaky roof and other substandard conditions of the tarpaper building. This became the Davis case.
During and after the Brown decision, Hill remained an instrumental force in developing legal strategies during Virginia's "massive resistance" to desegregation, in which many public schools closed rather than admit blacks.
He filed many suits in the state to compel change in such areas as voting rights, jury selection, access to school buses and employment protection.
Hill's activism came at a price.
A cross was burned on his lawn in 1955, and his family received so many threats that his wife installed floodlights at home.
At the time, Hill said officials in Richmond "had the ambulance, the fire department and the undertaker all sent to my house in about 15 minutes of each other" to intimidate him.
He was born Oliver White in Richmond on May 1, 1907.
After his parents divorced, he took the surname of his stepfather. The family settled in Washington, where, as Oliver Hill, he graduated from high school.
Hill was a 1931 graduate of Howard University and a 1933 graduate of its law school, where he finished second to Marshall in class rank.
It took many years for Hill to establish himself.
An early law practice in Roanoke, Va., went under during the Depression, and he was forced to wait tables in Washington until opening a law office in Richmond in 1939.
After returning from Army service during World War II, Hill unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat in 1947 for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. The next year, he won a seat on the Richmond City Council but lost a reelection bid after one term. Hill sat on the national Democratic Party's Biracial Committee on Civil Rights in 1960, and the next year President Kennedy named him to the Federal Housing Administration as an assistant to the commissioner. During his five-year stint, Hill oversaw racial-fairness policies in housing.
Afterward, he returned to his Richmond practice and continued to work until he went blind in the late 1990s. Shortly afterward, he published a memoir, "The Big Bang: Brown vs. Board of Education and Beyond."
In 1999, President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Survivors include a son, Oliver W. Hill Jr. of Richmond; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printed...6763205.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california
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By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post
August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON — Oliver W. Hill, a Virginia lawyer who helped overturn legal segregation in his native state and was one of the country's foremost civil rights defenders during a six-decade career, died of a heart ailment Sunday at his home in Richmond, Va. He was 100.
Hill was an instrumental member of an NAACP-affiliated legal team that persistently attacked segregation.
He also was a lead lawyer on a Virginia case later incorporated into Brown vs. Board of Education, the 1954 case that resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring segregated schools unlawful.
He lacked the recognition of his Howard University Law School classmate Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Supreme Court justice, but at one time, Hill had 75 civil rights cases pending.
He was estimated to have won $50 million in better pay and infrastructure needs for Virginia's black teachers and students during his career.
Hill, who was raised in Washington, D.C., spent his public life in Richmond, where in 1948 he was the first black person elected to the City Council in 50 years.
Although his term in office was short, his civil rights legacy proved far more enduring because of his role as a lead lawyer in Davis vs. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Va., one of the five cases the U.S. Supreme Court combined into its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.
Marshall was the lead lawyer in the high court case.
Hill's involvement in the Davis case began through his affiliation with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
He worked closely with a team that included Marshall; Howard Law School Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, a mentor to Marshall and Hill; and Spottswood W. Robinson III, a future Howard dean and chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Their goal was to challenge more than the existing "separate but equal" system of public facilities that had been created with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson.
In 1951, Hill and Robinson took up the cause of students at an all-black high school in Farmville, Va., who had gone on a two-week strike to protest the leaky roof and other substandard conditions of the tarpaper building. This became the Davis case.
During and after the Brown decision, Hill remained an instrumental force in developing legal strategies during Virginia's "massive resistance" to desegregation, in which many public schools closed rather than admit blacks.
He filed many suits in the state to compel change in such areas as voting rights, jury selection, access to school buses and employment protection.
Hill's activism came at a price.
A cross was burned on his lawn in 1955, and his family received so many threats that his wife installed floodlights at home.
At the time, Hill said officials in Richmond "had the ambulance, the fire department and the undertaker all sent to my house in about 15 minutes of each other" to intimidate him.
He was born Oliver White in Richmond on May 1, 1907.
After his parents divorced, he took the surname of his stepfather. The family settled in Washington, where, as Oliver Hill, he graduated from high school.
Hill was a 1931 graduate of Howard University and a 1933 graduate of its law school, where he finished second to Marshall in class rank.
It took many years for Hill to establish himself.
An early law practice in Roanoke, Va., went under during the Depression, and he was forced to wait tables in Washington until opening a law office in Richmond in 1939.
After returning from Army service during World War II, Hill unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat in 1947 for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. The next year, he won a seat on the Richmond City Council but lost a reelection bid after one term. Hill sat on the national Democratic Party's Biracial Committee on Civil Rights in 1960, and the next year President Kennedy named him to the Federal Housing Administration as an assistant to the commissioner. During his five-year stint, Hill oversaw racial-fairness policies in housing.
Afterward, he returned to his Richmond practice and continued to work until he went blind in the late 1990s. Shortly afterward, he published a memoir, "The Big Bang: Brown vs. Board of Education and Beyond."
In 1999, President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Survivors include a son, Oliver W. Hill Jr. of Richmond; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printed...6763205.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california
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The Afro American
By AFRO Staff
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a belatedly-recognized pioneer in the civil disobedience movement, died Aug. 10 at her daughter's home in Gloucester, Va. She was 90.
"We thank God she had a peaceful passing," said granddaughter Aleah Bacquie Vaughn in an interview with the AFRO. "When she died, she was holding my mother's (Brenda Morgan Bacquie) hand."
More than a decade before Rosa Parks' definitive act of civil disobedience in 1955, Morgan bucked Jim Crow and, with the help of Thurgood Marshall, took her case to the Supreme Court and won.
It was a hot, humid July day in 1944 when Morgan had her meeting with destiny. The 27-year-old widowed mother of two boarded a Greyhound bus in Gloucester, Va., headed north on what was then Route 17, bound for her Baltimore home soon after suffering from a miscarriage. She took a seat next to a young mother with an infant, about midway in the "Colored" section, where she was forced to sit by law. But just a few miles down the road, Morgan and her seatmate were ordered to get up to make room for a White couple boarding the bus. Morgan said no.
"She was sitting where Negroes at that time were supposed to sit. She paid for her seat. She just thought that wasn't right [and] she refused to do it," said her husband Stanley Kirkaldy in a 2005 interview with the AFRO.
After Morgan refused to relinquish her seat, the driver directed the bus to the town of Saluda, stopping outside the jail, where a sheriff's deputy boarded the bus with a warrant for Morgan's arrest. She ripped it up and threw it out the window. That act of bold defiance must have embarrassed the deputy and forced him to act at his own peril.
<center><font size="4">"She said anybody would have done what she did
but everybody would not have done it," Cooke said.
"That was a courageous stance; she took a stand not to stand."</font size></center>
"When I refused to give up my seat, then they said, 'We'll have you arrested.' Well, I said, `That's perfectly all right'; but when he put his hands on me, well, then that's when I kicked him," said Morgan during a television interview in 2001.
That deputy staggered off the bus and another came on and attempted to put his hands on Morgan, but she fought him also. One account claimed the second deputy threatened to hit Morgan with a nightstick, to which she replied, "We'll whip each other."
Famed Richmond, Va. attorney Spottswood Robinson, who was later tapped to be one of the lawyers arguing the Brown Supreme Court case in 1954, represented Morgan. He argued that segregation laws were impractical because they impeded interstate commerce. The "impractical" argument had been used in many of the cases leading up to the Brown decision, but the Middlesex Circuit Court ruled against Morgan and she was ordered to pay a $10 fine.
However, two NAACP lawyers, William Hastie, dean of the Howard University Law School, and Thurgood Marshall, appealed the case on her behalf before the Supreme COurt in 1946.
"..The national business of interstate commerce is not to be disfigured by the disruptive local practices bred of racial notions alien to our national ideal," argued Marshall.
The court agreed with him. On June 3, 1946, they reached a 6-1 decision that struck down Virginia's statute on buses traveling from state to state.
"As no state law can reach beyond its own border, nor bar transportation of passengers across its boundaries, diverse seating requirements for the races in interstate journeys result...It seems clear to us that seating arrangements for the different races in interstate motor travel require a single, uniform rule to promote and protect national travel. Consequently, we hold the Virginia statute in controversy invalid," wrote the Court.
A year after the Morgan decision, the "original freedom riders," eight White and eight Black activists from the newly-formed Congress of Racial Equality, began the two-week "Journey of Reconciliation" to test the new law. "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow," was the soaring anthem —— inspired by Morgan's courageous act of defiance —— sung by the activists as they traveled throughout the South.
When you ride interstate, Jim Crow is dead / Get on the bus, sit anyplace, `Cause Irene Morgan won her case.
Despite being immortalized in song, history books obscured Morgan's contribution for decades, until her birthplace of Gloucester, Va., honored her during the town's 350th anniversary in 2001. Then President Bill Clinton also recognized her that year with the Presidential Citizens Medal —— the second-highest civilian honor in the United States.
Dr. Dorothy Cooke, a retired educator who had a major role in unveiling Mrs. Kirkaldy's legacy to the public eye, said history will likely never see another Irene Morgan.
"Sometimes you wonder if they tore up the mold," she said.
Cooke said highlighting Mrs. Kirkaldy's contribution to the civil rights movement was necessary, although the longtime Gloucester resident often shied away from any special recognition.
"She said anybody would have done what she did but everybody would not have done it," Cooke said. "That was a courageous stance; she took a stand not to stand."
Bacquie Vaughn said her grandmother was an "extrememly humble" individual who went about doing extraordinary things without fanfare.
"She was remarkable outside of this case," Bacquie Vaughn said. "There were elements of her character that were always constant."
For years, she said, the family shared Thanksgiving dinner with countless uncles —— homeless men —— whom her grandmother invited, offered them baths, washed and pressed their clothes or gave them new ones. And then there were the African students whom whe would routinely invite for Sunday dinners. She once rescued a boy from a burning building, another said. She obtained her bachelor's degree from St. John's University at age 68 and her master's from Queen's College at 73 —— this from a woman who previously had had a third-grade education.
But for all those decades, she never said much about that summer day in 1944.
"She really didn't think that she was such an extraordinary person," said her granddaughter, Janine Bacquie in a Richmond Times-Dispatch article. "She felt she had to do what was right. She just wanted to live her life and love her family."
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy is survived by her children, Sherwood Morgan and Brenda Morgan Bacquie; five grandchildren, Aleah Bacquie Vaughn, Shoshanna Bacquie Walden, Janine Bacquie, Deborah Morgan-Barrax and Nechesa Morgan; daughter-in-law Teresa Morgan and son-in-law Gerald Barrax; two sisters, James (Jim) Laforest and Justine Walker; great-grandchildren, other family and friends. Funeral services will be held Aug. 18 at Gloucester High School at 11 a.m.
http://www.afro.com/content/templates/?a=7788&z=1
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The Afro American
By AFRO Staff
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a belatedly-recognized pioneer in the civil disobedience movement, died Aug. 10 at her daughter's home in Gloucester, Va. She was 90.
"We thank God she had a peaceful passing," said granddaughter Aleah Bacquie Vaughn in an interview with the AFRO. "When she died, she was holding my mother's (Brenda Morgan Bacquie) hand."
More than a decade before Rosa Parks' definitive act of civil disobedience in 1955, Morgan bucked Jim Crow and, with the help of Thurgood Marshall, took her case to the Supreme Court and won.
It was a hot, humid July day in 1944 when Morgan had her meeting with destiny. The 27-year-old widowed mother of two boarded a Greyhound bus in Gloucester, Va., headed north on what was then Route 17, bound for her Baltimore home soon after suffering from a miscarriage. She took a seat next to a young mother with an infant, about midway in the "Colored" section, where she was forced to sit by law. But just a few miles down the road, Morgan and her seatmate were ordered to get up to make room for a White couple boarding the bus. Morgan said no.
"She was sitting where Negroes at that time were supposed to sit. She paid for her seat. She just thought that wasn't right [and] she refused to do it," said her husband Stanley Kirkaldy in a 2005 interview with the AFRO.
After Morgan refused to relinquish her seat, the driver directed the bus to the town of Saluda, stopping outside the jail, where a sheriff's deputy boarded the bus with a warrant for Morgan's arrest. She ripped it up and threw it out the window. That act of bold defiance must have embarrassed the deputy and forced him to act at his own peril.
<center><font size="4">"She said anybody would have done what she did
but everybody would not have done it," Cooke said.
"That was a courageous stance; she took a stand not to stand."</font size></center>
"When I refused to give up my seat, then they said, 'We'll have you arrested.' Well, I said, `That's perfectly all right'; but when he put his hands on me, well, then that's when I kicked him," said Morgan during a television interview in 2001.
That deputy staggered off the bus and another came on and attempted to put his hands on Morgan, but she fought him also. One account claimed the second deputy threatened to hit Morgan with a nightstick, to which she replied, "We'll whip each other."
Famed Richmond, Va. attorney Spottswood Robinson, who was later tapped to be one of the lawyers arguing the Brown Supreme Court case in 1954, represented Morgan. He argued that segregation laws were impractical because they impeded interstate commerce. The "impractical" argument had been used in many of the cases leading up to the Brown decision, but the Middlesex Circuit Court ruled against Morgan and she was ordered to pay a $10 fine.
However, two NAACP lawyers, William Hastie, dean of the Howard University Law School, and Thurgood Marshall, appealed the case on her behalf before the Supreme COurt in 1946.
"..The national business of interstate commerce is not to be disfigured by the disruptive local practices bred of racial notions alien to our national ideal," argued Marshall.
The court agreed with him. On June 3, 1946, they reached a 6-1 decision that struck down Virginia's statute on buses traveling from state to state.
"As no state law can reach beyond its own border, nor bar transportation of passengers across its boundaries, diverse seating requirements for the races in interstate journeys result...It seems clear to us that seating arrangements for the different races in interstate motor travel require a single, uniform rule to promote and protect national travel. Consequently, we hold the Virginia statute in controversy invalid," wrote the Court.
A year after the Morgan decision, the "original freedom riders," eight White and eight Black activists from the newly-formed Congress of Racial Equality, began the two-week "Journey of Reconciliation" to test the new law. "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow," was the soaring anthem —— inspired by Morgan's courageous act of defiance —— sung by the activists as they traveled throughout the South.
When you ride interstate, Jim Crow is dead / Get on the bus, sit anyplace, `Cause Irene Morgan won her case.
Despite being immortalized in song, history books obscured Morgan's contribution for decades, until her birthplace of Gloucester, Va., honored her during the town's 350th anniversary in 2001. Then President Bill Clinton also recognized her that year with the Presidential Citizens Medal —— the second-highest civilian honor in the United States.
Dr. Dorothy Cooke, a retired educator who had a major role in unveiling Mrs. Kirkaldy's legacy to the public eye, said history will likely never see another Irene Morgan.
"Sometimes you wonder if they tore up the mold," she said.
Cooke said highlighting Mrs. Kirkaldy's contribution to the civil rights movement was necessary, although the longtime Gloucester resident often shied away from any special recognition.
"She said anybody would have done what she did but everybody would not have done it," Cooke said. "That was a courageous stance; she took a stand not to stand."
Bacquie Vaughn said her grandmother was an "extrememly humble" individual who went about doing extraordinary things without fanfare.
"She was remarkable outside of this case," Bacquie Vaughn said. "There were elements of her character that were always constant."
For years, she said, the family shared Thanksgiving dinner with countless uncles —— homeless men —— whom her grandmother invited, offered them baths, washed and pressed their clothes or gave them new ones. And then there were the African students whom whe would routinely invite for Sunday dinners. She once rescued a boy from a burning building, another said. She obtained her bachelor's degree from St. John's University at age 68 and her master's from Queen's College at 73 —— this from a woman who previously had had a third-grade education.
But for all those decades, she never said much about that summer day in 1944.
"She really didn't think that she was such an extraordinary person," said her granddaughter, Janine Bacquie in a Richmond Times-Dispatch article. "She felt she had to do what was right. She just wanted to live her life and love her family."
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy is survived by her children, Sherwood Morgan and Brenda Morgan Bacquie; five grandchildren, Aleah Bacquie Vaughn, Shoshanna Bacquie Walden, Janine Bacquie, Deborah Morgan-Barrax and Nechesa Morgan; daughter-in-law Teresa Morgan and son-in-law Gerald Barrax; two sisters, James (Jim) Laforest and Justine Walker; great-grandchildren, other family and friends. Funeral services will be held Aug. 18 at Gloucester High School at 11 a.m.
http://www.afro.com/content/templates/?a=7788&z=1
source: bookrags.com
Lloyd Albert Quarterman was one of only a handful of African Americans to work on the "Manhattan Project ," the team that developed the first atom bomb in the 1940s. He was also noted as a research chemist who specialized in fluoride chemistry, producing some of the first compounds using inert gases and developing the "diamond window" for the study of compounds using corrosive hydrogen fluoride gas. In addition, later in his career, Quarterman initiated work on synthetic blood.
Quarterman was born May 31, 1918, in Philadelphia. He attended St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he continued the interest in chemistry he had demonstrated from an early age. Just after he completed his bachelor's degree in 1943 he was hired by the U.S. War Department to work on the production of the atomic bomb , an assignment code-named the Manhattan Project. Originally hired as a junior chemist, he worked at both the secret underground facility at the University of Chicago and at the Columbia University laboratory in New York City; the project was spread across the country in various locations. It was the team of scientists at Columbia which first split the atom. To do this, scientists participated in trying to isolate an isotope of uranium necessary for nuclear fission; this was Quarterman's main task during his time in New York.
Quarterman was one of only six African American scientists who worked on the development of atomic bomb. At the secret Chicago facility, where the unused football stadium had been converted into an enormous, hidden laboratory for the "plutonium program," Quarterman studied quantum mechanics under renowned Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. When the Manhattan Project ended in 1946, the Chicago facilities were converted to become Argonne National Laboratories, and Quarterman was one of the scientists who stayed on. Although his contributions included work on the first nuclear power plant, he was predominantly a fluoride and nuclear chemist, creating new chemical compounds and new molecules from fluoride solutions. Dr. Larry Stein, who worked at Argonne at the same time as Quarterman, told interviewer Marianne Fedunkiw that Quarterman was very good at purifying hydrogen fluoride. "He helped build a still to purify it, which he ran." This was part of the research which led to the production of the compound xenon tetrafluoride at Argonne.
Xenon is one of the "inert" gases and was thought to be unable to react with other molecules, so Quarterman's work in producing a xenon compound was a pioneering effort.
After a number of years at Argonne National Laboratories, Quarterman returned to school and received his master's of science from Northwestern University in 1952. In addition to his fluoride chemistry work, Quarterman was a spectroscopist researching interactions between radiation and matter. He developed a corrosion resistant "window" of diamonds with which to view hydrogen fluoride . He described this to Ivan Van Sertima, who interviewed him in 1979: "It was a very small window--one-eighth of an inch. The reason why they were one-eighth of an inch was because I couldn't get the money to buy bigger windows. These small diamonds cost one thousand dollars apiece and I needed two for a window." Diamonds were necessary because hydrogen fluoride was so corrosive it would eat up glass or any other known container material. Quarterman was able to study the X-ray, ultraviolet, and Raman spectra of a given compound by dissolving it in hydrogen fluoride, making a cell, and shining an electromagnetic beam through the solution to see the vibrations of the molecules. His first successful trial was run in 1967.
Quarterman also began research into "synthetic blood " late in his career but he was thwarted by what he described as "socio-political problems" and later fell ill and died before he could complete it. Besides holding memberships in the American Chemical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Scientific Research Society of America, Quarterman was an officer of the Society of Applied Spectroscopy. He also encouraged African American students interested in science by visiting public schools in Chicago, and was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In recognition for his contributions to science, Quarterman's alma mater, St. Augustine's College, departed from 102 years of tradition to award him an honorary Ph.D. in chemistry in 1971 for a lifetime of achievement. He was also cited for his research on the Manhattan project in a certificate, dated August 6, 1945, by the Secretary of War for "work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II."
Quarterman was also a renowned athlete. During his university days at St. Augustine's College he was an avid football player. Van Sertima, who interviewed Quarterman three years before his death, later wrote, "As he spoke, the shock of his voice and his occasional laughter seemed to contradict his illness and I began to see before me, not an aging scientist, but the champion footballer." Quarterman died at the Billings Hospital in Chicago in the late summer of 1982. He donated his body to science.
Lloyd Albert Quarterman
Chemist
Chemist
Lloyd Albert Quarterman was one of only a handful of African Americans to work on the "Manhattan Project ," the team that developed the first atom bomb in the 1940s. He was also noted as a research chemist who specialized in fluoride chemistry, producing some of the first compounds using inert gases and developing the "diamond window" for the study of compounds using corrosive hydrogen fluoride gas. In addition, later in his career, Quarterman initiated work on synthetic blood.
Quarterman was born May 31, 1918, in Philadelphia. He attended St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he continued the interest in chemistry he had demonstrated from an early age. Just after he completed his bachelor's degree in 1943 he was hired by the U.S. War Department to work on the production of the atomic bomb , an assignment code-named the Manhattan Project. Originally hired as a junior chemist, he worked at both the secret underground facility at the University of Chicago and at the Columbia University laboratory in New York City; the project was spread across the country in various locations. It was the team of scientists at Columbia which first split the atom. To do this, scientists participated in trying to isolate an isotope of uranium necessary for nuclear fission; this was Quarterman's main task during his time in New York.
Quarterman was one of only six African American scientists who worked on the development of atomic bomb. At the secret Chicago facility, where the unused football stadium had been converted into an enormous, hidden laboratory for the "plutonium program," Quarterman studied quantum mechanics under renowned Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. When the Manhattan Project ended in 1946, the Chicago facilities were converted to become Argonne National Laboratories, and Quarterman was one of the scientists who stayed on. Although his contributions included work on the first nuclear power plant, he was predominantly a fluoride and nuclear chemist, creating new chemical compounds and new molecules from fluoride solutions. Dr. Larry Stein, who worked at Argonne at the same time as Quarterman, told interviewer Marianne Fedunkiw that Quarterman was very good at purifying hydrogen fluoride. "He helped build a still to purify it, which he ran." This was part of the research which led to the production of the compound xenon tetrafluoride at Argonne.
Xenon is one of the "inert" gases and was thought to be unable to react with other molecules, so Quarterman's work in producing a xenon compound was a pioneering effort.
After a number of years at Argonne National Laboratories, Quarterman returned to school and received his master's of science from Northwestern University in 1952. In addition to his fluoride chemistry work, Quarterman was a spectroscopist researching interactions between radiation and matter. He developed a corrosion resistant "window" of diamonds with which to view hydrogen fluoride . He described this to Ivan Van Sertima, who interviewed him in 1979: "It was a very small window--one-eighth of an inch. The reason why they were one-eighth of an inch was because I couldn't get the money to buy bigger windows. These small diamonds cost one thousand dollars apiece and I needed two for a window." Diamonds were necessary because hydrogen fluoride was so corrosive it would eat up glass or any other known container material. Quarterman was able to study the X-ray, ultraviolet, and Raman spectra of a given compound by dissolving it in hydrogen fluoride, making a cell, and shining an electromagnetic beam through the solution to see the vibrations of the molecules. His first successful trial was run in 1967.
Quarterman also began research into "synthetic blood " late in his career but he was thwarted by what he described as "socio-political problems" and later fell ill and died before he could complete it. Besides holding memberships in the American Chemical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Scientific Research Society of America, Quarterman was an officer of the Society of Applied Spectroscopy. He also encouraged African American students interested in science by visiting public schools in Chicago, and was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In recognition for his contributions to science, Quarterman's alma mater, St. Augustine's College, departed from 102 years of tradition to award him an honorary Ph.D. in chemistry in 1971 for a lifetime of achievement. He was also cited for his research on the Manhattan project in a certificate, dated August 6, 1945, by the Secretary of War for "work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II."
Quarterman was also a renowned athlete. During his university days at St. Augustine's College he was an avid football player. Van Sertima, who interviewed Quarterman three years before his death, later wrote, "As he spoke, the shock of his voice and his occasional laughter seemed to contradict his illness and I began to see before me, not an aging scientist, but the champion footballer." Quarterman died at the Billings Hospital in Chicago in the late summer of 1982. He donated his body to science.
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source: aaregistry.com
December 3
"On this date in 1922, Ralph Gardner was born. He was an African-American scientist who specialized in the development of hard plastics.
From Cleveland, Ralph Alexander Gardner’s parents were Vivian Hicks Gardner, a teacher and housewife, and Clarence Chavous Gardner, a musician and government worker. His mother earned a degree from the University of Illinois. While in the eighth and ninth grade Gardner realized that chemistry was his direction in life. Gardner attended the Cleveland Public Schools, graduating from John Adams High School.
He began college at the Case School of Applied Science in 1939 but grew disillusioned with the treatment he received there. As the only black student in their cooperative program (designed to find work for its students), he found it demeaning to be told that the school’s efforts to find him a job in a hospital kitchen or as a busboy were fruitless. He transferred to the University of California Berkley, then back home to eventually graduate from the University Of Illinois School Of Chemistry in 1943. Gardner took a research post at the University of Chicago’s Argonne National Laboratory.
For the next four and a half years he was involved on classified plutonium research that was known as the Manhattan Project-the making of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan in 1945. He worked under nuclear scientist Dr. Enrico Fermi and radioactivity scientist Dr. Nathan Sugarman. Gardner was one of more than a dozen black scientists who were involved in research on the atomic project. Those black scientists known to have been involved in the metallurgical laboratories also included Lloyd Albert Quarterman, Edward A. Russell, Moddie Taylor, Harold Delaney, Benjamin Scott, J. Ernest Wilkins, and Jaspar Jefferies. A second group at Columbia University included George Dewitt Turner, Cecil Goldsburg White, Sydney Oliver Thompson, William Jacob Knox, and George Warren Reid Jr. Despite his work on the atomic bomb, Gardner could not find an academic position in his field when he left Argonne in 1947 so he worked as a waiter until 1949.
Known throughout most of his life as "Ralph Alexander Gardner," he added the "Chavis" surname late in his career in recognition of his relationship to John Chavis, the first African American to graduate from Princeton in 1760. In 1949 he became a research chemist and project leader at the Standard Oil Company in Ohio, where he remained for almost twenty years. Gardner-Chavis then took a teaching position in Cleveland State University's chemistry department, where he remained full-time from 1968 to 1985.
He later combined part-time teaching with work in the research lab of Molecular Technology Corp., a private firm where he also served as the Vice President of Research and on the board of directors. Currently, he holds emeritus status in the CSU Chemistry Department, where he continues his research on catalysis and molecular technology, topics on which he has published numerous scholarly articles.
Dr. Ralph Gardner-Chavis became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity in 1942 and AICHE in 2001.
Reference:
Reference Library of Black America Volumes 1 through 5
Edited by Mpho Mabunda
Copyright 1998, Gale Research, Detroit, MI
Ralph Gardner, pioneer in the field of science
December 3
"On this date in 1922, Ralph Gardner was born. He was an African-American scientist who specialized in the development of hard plastics.
From Cleveland, Ralph Alexander Gardner’s parents were Vivian Hicks Gardner, a teacher and housewife, and Clarence Chavous Gardner, a musician and government worker. His mother earned a degree from the University of Illinois. While in the eighth and ninth grade Gardner realized that chemistry was his direction in life. Gardner attended the Cleveland Public Schools, graduating from John Adams High School.
He began college at the Case School of Applied Science in 1939 but grew disillusioned with the treatment he received there. As the only black student in their cooperative program (designed to find work for its students), he found it demeaning to be told that the school’s efforts to find him a job in a hospital kitchen or as a busboy were fruitless. He transferred to the University of California Berkley, then back home to eventually graduate from the University Of Illinois School Of Chemistry in 1943. Gardner took a research post at the University of Chicago’s Argonne National Laboratory.
For the next four and a half years he was involved on classified plutonium research that was known as the Manhattan Project-the making of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan in 1945. He worked under nuclear scientist Dr. Enrico Fermi and radioactivity scientist Dr. Nathan Sugarman. Gardner was one of more than a dozen black scientists who were involved in research on the atomic project. Those black scientists known to have been involved in the metallurgical laboratories also included Lloyd Albert Quarterman, Edward A. Russell, Moddie Taylor, Harold Delaney, Benjamin Scott, J. Ernest Wilkins, and Jaspar Jefferies. A second group at Columbia University included George Dewitt Turner, Cecil Goldsburg White, Sydney Oliver Thompson, William Jacob Knox, and George Warren Reid Jr. Despite his work on the atomic bomb, Gardner could not find an academic position in his field when he left Argonne in 1947 so he worked as a waiter until 1949.
Known throughout most of his life as "Ralph Alexander Gardner," he added the "Chavis" surname late in his career in recognition of his relationship to John Chavis, the first African American to graduate from Princeton in 1760. In 1949 he became a research chemist and project leader at the Standard Oil Company in Ohio, where he remained for almost twenty years. Gardner-Chavis then took a teaching position in Cleveland State University's chemistry department, where he remained full-time from 1968 to 1985.
He later combined part-time teaching with work in the research lab of Molecular Technology Corp., a private firm where he also served as the Vice President of Research and on the board of directors. Currently, he holds emeritus status in the CSU Chemistry Department, where he continues his research on catalysis and molecular technology, topics on which he has published numerous scholarly articles.
Dr. Ralph Gardner-Chavis became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity in 1942 and AICHE in 2001.
Reference:
Reference Library of Black America Volumes 1 through 5
Edited by Mpho Mabunda
Copyright 1998, Gale Research, Detroit, MI
Last edited:
source: friendsoftcc.com
Paul Revere Williams (February 18, 1894 – January 23, 1980) was an African American architect who based his practice largely in Los Angeles, California and the Southern California area. Orphaned at the age of four, he was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier, subsequently working as a landscape architect. He went on to attend the University of Southern California designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became a certified architect in 1921, and the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi.
He won an architectural competition at age 25 and three years later opened his own office. Known as an outstanding draftsman, Williams perfected the skill of rendering drawings "upside down". This skill was developed so that his clients (who may have been uncomfortable sitting next to a "Black" architect) would see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him. Fighting to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920. Williams was the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In 1939 he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Los Angeles (now headquarters of Litton Industries). During World War II Williams worked for the Navy Department as an architect. Following the war he published his first book, The Small Home of Tomorrow (1945), with a successor volume New Homes for Today the following year. In 1957 became the first African American to be voted an AIA Fellow.
In 1951 he won the Omega Psi Phi Man of the Year award and in 1953 Williams received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his outstanding contributions as an architect and member of the African American community. Williams also received honorary doctorates from Howard University (doctor of architecture), Lincoln University (doctor of science), and the Tuskegee Institute (doctor of fine arts). In 2004, USC honored him by listing him among its distinguished alumni, in the television commercial for the school shown during its football games.
Williams famously remarked upon the bitter irony of the fact that most of the homes he designed, and whose construction he oversaw, were on parcels whose deeds included segregation covenants barring blacks from purchasing them.
Works
Williams designed more than 2,000 private homes, most of which were in the Hollywood Hills and the Mid-Wilshire portion of Los Angeles (including his own home in the Mid-City district). He also designed at least one home in the San Rafael district in the Pasadena Arroyo. His most famous homes were for Hollywood celebrities, and he was well regarded for his mastery of various architectural styles. Modern interpretations of Tudor-revival, French Chateau, Regency and Mediterranean were all within his vernacular. One notable home he designed was later used for exterior scenes of the Colby mansion on television's "The Colbys" (1060 Brooklawn Dr. Bel Air) This is currently the home of Barron Hilton. His client list included Frank Sinatra (the notorious pushbutton house), Lon Chaney, Sr., Lucille Ball, Tyrone Power (two house), Barbara Stanwyck, Bert Lahr, William S. Paley, Charles Cottrell, Will Hays, Zasu Pitts and Danny Thomas. In contrast to these splendid mansions, Williams co-designed the first federally funded public housing projects in the post-war period (Langton Terrace, Washington, D.C.) and later the Pueblo del Rio project in southeast Los Angeles.
Noted public buildings that Williams designed or contributed to (in Los Angeles, unless otherwise noted) include:
Shrine Auditorium (Williams helped prepare construction drawings as a young architect)
Hollywood YMCA
Los Angeles County Courthouse[1]
Los Angeles County Hall of Administration
United Nations Building (Paris), Paris, France
Saks Fifth Avenue, Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills, California
the concrete paraboloid La Concha Motel in Las Vegas (disassembled and moved to the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada for use as the museum lobby 2006)
Williams retired his practice in 1973.
Quotes
"If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated."
"Planning is thinking beforehand how something is to be made or done, and mixing imagination with the product – which in a broad sense makes all of us planners. The only difference is that some people get a license to get paid for thinking and the rest of us just contribute our good thoughts to our fellow man."
Also, one of his most famous and visible works was the control tower at Los Angeles International Airport.
Paul Revere Williams
Architect
Architect
Paul Revere Williams (February 18, 1894 – January 23, 1980) was an African American architect who based his practice largely in Los Angeles, California and the Southern California area. Orphaned at the age of four, he was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier, subsequently working as a landscape architect. He went on to attend the University of Southern California designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became a certified architect in 1921, and the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi.
He won an architectural competition at age 25 and three years later opened his own office. Known as an outstanding draftsman, Williams perfected the skill of rendering drawings "upside down". This skill was developed so that his clients (who may have been uncomfortable sitting next to a "Black" architect) would see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him. Fighting to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920. Williams was the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In 1939 he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Los Angeles (now headquarters of Litton Industries). During World War II Williams worked for the Navy Department as an architect. Following the war he published his first book, The Small Home of Tomorrow (1945), with a successor volume New Homes for Today the following year. In 1957 became the first African American to be voted an AIA Fellow.
In 1951 he won the Omega Psi Phi Man of the Year award and in 1953 Williams received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his outstanding contributions as an architect and member of the African American community. Williams also received honorary doctorates from Howard University (doctor of architecture), Lincoln University (doctor of science), and the Tuskegee Institute (doctor of fine arts). In 2004, USC honored him by listing him among its distinguished alumni, in the television commercial for the school shown during its football games.
Williams famously remarked upon the bitter irony of the fact that most of the homes he designed, and whose construction he oversaw, were on parcels whose deeds included segregation covenants barring blacks from purchasing them.
Works
Williams designed more than 2,000 private homes, most of which were in the Hollywood Hills and the Mid-Wilshire portion of Los Angeles (including his own home in the Mid-City district). He also designed at least one home in the San Rafael district in the Pasadena Arroyo. His most famous homes were for Hollywood celebrities, and he was well regarded for his mastery of various architectural styles. Modern interpretations of Tudor-revival, French Chateau, Regency and Mediterranean were all within his vernacular. One notable home he designed was later used for exterior scenes of the Colby mansion on television's "The Colbys" (1060 Brooklawn Dr. Bel Air) This is currently the home of Barron Hilton. His client list included Frank Sinatra (the notorious pushbutton house), Lon Chaney, Sr., Lucille Ball, Tyrone Power (two house), Barbara Stanwyck, Bert Lahr, William S. Paley, Charles Cottrell, Will Hays, Zasu Pitts and Danny Thomas. In contrast to these splendid mansions, Williams co-designed the first federally funded public housing projects in the post-war period (Langton Terrace, Washington, D.C.) and later the Pueblo del Rio project in southeast Los Angeles.
Noted public buildings that Williams designed or contributed to (in Los Angeles, unless otherwise noted) include:
Shrine Auditorium (Williams helped prepare construction drawings as a young architect)
Hollywood YMCA
Los Angeles County Courthouse[1]
Los Angeles County Hall of Administration
United Nations Building (Paris), Paris, France
Saks Fifth Avenue, Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills, California
the concrete paraboloid La Concha Motel in Las Vegas (disassembled and moved to the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada for use as the museum lobby 2006)
Williams retired his practice in 1973.
Quotes
"If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated."
"Planning is thinking beforehand how something is to be made or done, and mixing imagination with the product – which in a broad sense makes all of us planners. The only difference is that some people get a license to get paid for thinking and the rest of us just contribute our good thoughts to our fellow man."
Also, one of his most famous and visible works was the control tower at Los Angeles International Airport.
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source: www.maa.org
David Blackwell currently lives in Berkeley, California, where he is still active as a scholar, even though he retired a few years ago from the University of California at Berkeley as a distinguished professor of Mathematics and Statistics. He joined the faculty at Berkeley in 1954 after having spent ten years at Howard University, in Washington, DC, one year at Stanford, one year at Clark College, now Clark-Atlanta University, one year at Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and one year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.
As a schoolboy, Blackwell did not care for algebra and trigonometry ("I could do it and I could see that it was useful, but it wasn't really exciting.") Geometry turned him on. "The most interesting thing I remember from calculus was Newton's method for solving equations. That was the only thing in calculus I really liked. The rest of it looked like stuff that was useful for engineers in finding moments of inertia and volumes and such." In his junior year he took an elementary analysis course and really fell in love with mathematics. "That's the first time I knew that serious mathematics was for me. It became clear that it was not simply a few things that I liked. The whole subject was just beautiful." Four years later he had a Ph.D..
The list of black mathematicians is short and it doesn't seem to be growing very rapidly. Blackwell thinks that many people are just more ambitious than he is. "Black people go in other directions. Black people are going into the professions: law, medicine, and business. I sort of understand that: there's more security. There's more certainty of having a fair income in those areas than there is in mathematics. [There are a number of examples of] black people who have had considerable mathematical talent but went into law."
Born in April 1919 in Centralia, Illinois, Blackwell spent ten years there attending public schools. At the age of sixteen he entered the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1935 where he received his AB degree in 1938, his AM in 1939 and his Ph.D. in 1941; all in mathematics. At the age of 22 he had earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and had been awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship to attend the Institute for Advanced Study. This was the beginning of his more than fifty professional years as a world-class mathematician.
While at Howard University, Blackwell distinguished himself as an excellent teacher, an able leader (department chair, 1947-1954) and a very productive scholar, publishing more than twenty papers during his tenure there. When he joined the faculty at Berkeley, these characteristics became even more manifest. At Berkeley, and worldwide, he was recognized as a distinguished scholar and a gifted teacher. He chaired the Department of Statistics (1957-1961) and he published an additional 50 plus papers (a total of 80 papers prior to retirement).
His professional activities as a scholar brought him widespread recognition and acclaim. He has received honorary Doctorate of Science degrees from twelve institutions: Harvard, Yale, University of Illinois, Howard University, Carnegie-Mellon, University of Southern California, Michigan State, Syracuse, Southern Illinois, University of Warwick, National University of Lesotho, and Amherst College. He has been selected president for the following: Institute of Mathematics Statistics, International Association for Statistics in Physical Sciences, and the Bernoulli Society. He has served as Vice President of the International Statistical Institute, the American Statistical Association, and the American Mathematical Society. Two of the highest honors bestowed upon him have been his election to the National Academy of Science (first and only African-American Mathematician elected) and his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Additionally he holds memberships in numerous professional organizations, including being a life member of NAM.
He has been highly sought as a visiting scholar or guest lecturer by many national and international universities. Students and scholars alike enjoy being in his audiences. Although I had the privilege of having lunch with him several years earlier in Berkeley, I first had the privilege of being in his audience when he gave the NAM Claytor Lecture in January 1985 at the Join Winter Meeting in Anaheim, CA. It was a delightful scholarly experience.
Ironically, when David Blackwell first enrolled at the University of Illinois, he went there with the expectation to earn a bachelor's degree so that he could get a job as an elementary teacher. An excellent teacher he became, but his audiences were never young students. Instead they have been among the best mathematical students and scholars of his era.
In an interview Blackwell was asked the question: "Of the areas in which you have worked, which do you think are the most significant?" He replied, "I've worked in so many areas; I'm sort of a dilettante. Basically, I'm not interested in doing research and I never have been ... I'm interested in understanding, which is quite a different thing." And the annals of history record that he has understood much.
David Harold Blackwell
Mathematician
[
Mathematician
David Blackwell currently lives in Berkeley, California, where he is still active as a scholar, even though he retired a few years ago from the University of California at Berkeley as a distinguished professor of Mathematics and Statistics. He joined the faculty at Berkeley in 1954 after having spent ten years at Howard University, in Washington, DC, one year at Stanford, one year at Clark College, now Clark-Atlanta University, one year at Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and one year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.
As a schoolboy, Blackwell did not care for algebra and trigonometry ("I could do it and I could see that it was useful, but it wasn't really exciting.") Geometry turned him on. "The most interesting thing I remember from calculus was Newton's method for solving equations. That was the only thing in calculus I really liked. The rest of it looked like stuff that was useful for engineers in finding moments of inertia and volumes and such." In his junior year he took an elementary analysis course and really fell in love with mathematics. "That's the first time I knew that serious mathematics was for me. It became clear that it was not simply a few things that I liked. The whole subject was just beautiful." Four years later he had a Ph.D..
The list of black mathematicians is short and it doesn't seem to be growing very rapidly. Blackwell thinks that many people are just more ambitious than he is. "Black people go in other directions. Black people are going into the professions: law, medicine, and business. I sort of understand that: there's more security. There's more certainty of having a fair income in those areas than there is in mathematics. [There are a number of examples of] black people who have had considerable mathematical talent but went into law."
Born in April 1919 in Centralia, Illinois, Blackwell spent ten years there attending public schools. At the age of sixteen he entered the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1935 where he received his AB degree in 1938, his AM in 1939 and his Ph.D. in 1941; all in mathematics. At the age of 22 he had earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and had been awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship to attend the Institute for Advanced Study. This was the beginning of his more than fifty professional years as a world-class mathematician.
While at Howard University, Blackwell distinguished himself as an excellent teacher, an able leader (department chair, 1947-1954) and a very productive scholar, publishing more than twenty papers during his tenure there. When he joined the faculty at Berkeley, these characteristics became even more manifest. At Berkeley, and worldwide, he was recognized as a distinguished scholar and a gifted teacher. He chaired the Department of Statistics (1957-1961) and he published an additional 50 plus papers (a total of 80 papers prior to retirement).
His professional activities as a scholar brought him widespread recognition and acclaim. He has received honorary Doctorate of Science degrees from twelve institutions: Harvard, Yale, University of Illinois, Howard University, Carnegie-Mellon, University of Southern California, Michigan State, Syracuse, Southern Illinois, University of Warwick, National University of Lesotho, and Amherst College. He has been selected president for the following: Institute of Mathematics Statistics, International Association for Statistics in Physical Sciences, and the Bernoulli Society. He has served as Vice President of the International Statistical Institute, the American Statistical Association, and the American Mathematical Society. Two of the highest honors bestowed upon him have been his election to the National Academy of Science (first and only African-American Mathematician elected) and his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Additionally he holds memberships in numerous professional organizations, including being a life member of NAM.
He has been highly sought as a visiting scholar or guest lecturer by many national and international universities. Students and scholars alike enjoy being in his audiences. Although I had the privilege of having lunch with him several years earlier in Berkeley, I first had the privilege of being in his audience when he gave the NAM Claytor Lecture in January 1985 at the Join Winter Meeting in Anaheim, CA. It was a delightful scholarly experience.
Ironically, when David Blackwell first enrolled at the University of Illinois, he went there with the expectation to earn a bachelor's degree so that he could get a job as an elementary teacher. An excellent teacher he became, but his audiences were never young students. Instead they have been among the best mathematical students and scholars of his era.
In an interview Blackwell was asked the question: "Of the areas in which you have worked, which do you think are the most significant?" He replied, "I've worked in so many areas; I'm sort of a dilettante. Basically, I'm not interested in doing research and I never have been ... I'm interested in understanding, which is quite a different thing." And the annals of history record that he has understood much.
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